Fools Rush Out
by LoveSupreme
Summary: Actual Sequel to Fools Rush In. Set six months after F.R.I., Tom is back and ready to cause trouble.
1. Tom, Part 1

Tom had his driver drop him off just north of College Bridge, which spanned the narrow channel between Haven Bay and Lake Concord and walked the rest of the way to the address the university had given him.

He felt slightly strange, he wasn't afraid to admit, but only because of his attire, he was sure: so different than the office. But as he delved into the mindset of the average collegian he would be miming today he felt more at home with it. In worn boating loafers and navy blue shorts his lower body was chilly in the early morning fog, but by time noon came around he knew he'd be burning up, even without the oversized green hoodie he was currently wearing

Speaking of which, he pulled against the restraints of his second-hand backpack enough to yank the hood up. He hadn't opted to disguise his long black hair with a wig or anything so uncouth, not unless it became absolutely necessary. Instead he simply wore it loose with no product, but that meant the morning wind invariably whipped it into his face, which aggravated him. Considering everything else about him obeyed his vaguest whims, one would think his hair could at least attempt to tow the line.

He wouldn't let that distract him though: he had too much to think through without focusing on that.

Charles' employers were woefully free with his information, so Tom had his home and office address, but he wouldn't necessarily need that information until things checked out with the boyfriend.

Years ago he had narrowly avoided premature action against Charles by meeting Harvey first. With Reed and Steven, all Tom had needed was a picture and some intel from Vision or like services to know that there was unfortunately no hope of these men bringing Charles up to heights glorious enough to throw him down from. Reed was too self-involved to love Charles into greatness, and Steven was even worse off: the kind of prude that could never tolerate Charles' variant and free-loving nature. Harvey, on the other hand, had looked good on paper. Hell, he'd looked fucking great. Tom had had every reason to get his hopes up.

The man was attractive, although Charles wasn't quite shallow enough to let that engross him entirely. A ridiculously passionate lawyer, he and Charles had taken turns prompting one another into ever lengthening leaps of naivete and hopefulness. They had dated for two years; Tom had even heard Charles say that he loved the man. If that wasn't enough to get your hopes up over then he didn't know what was. After all, Tom himself was the only boyfriend Charles had claimed to love up until Harvey.

Yet when he'd flown all the way out here and gone through all that trouble to introduce himself to the man all he'd gotten was a wasps' nest of intrigue: Moira, Harvey, Raven, Logan—all of them swarming up to protect the queen. He would have stood to fight, of course, if it had been worth it. But he had spent a whole ten minutes with Harvey waiting for the police to arrive and had realized that this man was not going to be the one to love Charles into perfection.

And of course he had been right. All he'd had to do was tantalize the man (through a neutral third-party of course) with the district attorney campaign up in Gotham and he'd dumped Charles straight off. Tom hadn't even finagled the man straight into the job! He'd still made him compete for it and everything! It was truly disappointing. Proved that he himself was a paragon among men to have loved Charles the way he had: no one else so far had managed it.

Needless to say, Tom had learned his lesson: he refused to get his hopes up this time around.

Reed had said that the boyfriend, one Erik Lensherr from the police report, was attractive and his mugshot proved it. But everything about him seemed so out of line for Charles. The fact that he had a mugshot at all (that wasn't for civil disobedience or eco-terrorism or something mundane like that) was curious enough to start with. Then when you took in the rest of him: capitalist entrepreneur who donated absolutely nothing to charity and did his own taxes so he wouldn' t have to pay anyone else to do it…the man was a penny-pincher if Tom had ever read intel on one, whereas Charles was generous to a fault and refused to keep track of his finances on principle.

Tom shook his head wearily. This would have all made much more sense if Charles and the strange Erik Lensherr had broken up by now, but six months after he'd heard of them they were still going strong. Indeed, Charles' colleague Professor Inham had gossiped that Erik had given Charles a key to his place and had even made a birthday present back in April of completely redoing the upstairs bathroom of his house so that Charles could take the baths he had always so loved, even back in high school.

Taking a deep breath, Tom thought that again: _back in high school_. This would be the first time he had seen Charles in person since they were teenagers. He had wanted the effect to be undiluted by repeated exposure, so he had always been careful to view from afar, like a proper anthropologist. Half the joy of this meeting would be seeing the blow his presence would strike against that pretty face, and he had plenty of photos to say it was still a very pretty face, for all the years since he had last held it.

Tom looked up and realized he was on Morrison and 19th now. If he went any farther he'd end up in front of Charles' apartment, quaint #1987-B, and that was not quite his goal. So he sneaked up just a little, just to take in Charles' new digs, and then turned right and headed up to Cafe Haifisch, an apt moniker since Lensherr's nickname around campus was apparently The Shark. Tom wondered which sort of shark they were talking about here...but he supposed he'd find out soon. The drug store across the street said it was approaching 8, and the redhead had said that the boss would be there by then (all it had taken was an apparently hysterical desire to complain directly to the owner about their lackadaisical tea-stocking). So Tom waited by the street-parking payment machine, and pretended to tie his shoes.

He was only at it for a few minutes when he heard Charles' ringing British voice and was surprised at himself that he felt the need to close his eyes for a moment to take it in. It sounded so different from the last time he had heard it, but then again the last time he had heard it the boy had been sobbing his guts out, so hard he'd been hyperventilating like a child with a skinned knee.

Tom pulled his backpack from around his back and pretended to be looking for something. He had expected the boyfriend to be on his own. He wasn't shaken, he was just surprised to hear Charles, to see him, because he _could _see him, from the corner of his vision although he couldn't risk taking him all in. As it was he saw the playfully boyish Keds, no socks, long khaki shorts. His legs were different than Tom remembered. In high school the boy had done track and his limbs were all wonderfully willowy, like a colt's. These seemed more grown-in, which made sense but didn't please him.

The men passed him without incident and ignored the back door to the cafe, going around to the front talking back and forth. Tom was surprised at the gravelly lightness to Lensherr's voice. He had been imagining something more like Logan's own snarling tones based on his mugshot and nickname.

"You picking the boy up straight from campus?" Lensherr questioned as they walked and Charles didn't answer so Tom assumed he had nodded. He glanced up and saw that Lensherr's hand was on the small of Charles' back, under his T-shirt. He choked back a swallow and nearly coughed but held it in at the last moment.

"I'm just going to do some labwork with Hank and then I'll pick up Kevin on the way back to meet you. Say, three?"

"Make sure Moira doesn't forget his math camp folder, I want to take a look at it."

Tom remembered then: Moira's son, a leftover from an abusive previous marriage. He had analyzed the woman extensively after she'd gotten him arrested and before deciding to go ahead and get her fired from the city police force over it. He wondered how she was liking being a university lackey, and hoped the answer was 'not much'.

Charles and his pet shark kissed deeply on the sidewalk and Tom forgot to swallow as he watched the curving line of Charles' body as he leaned, back and up, in Lensherr's grip. Then Charles ran to cross the street while the light was still green. Once safely on the other side though, he turned and cupped his hands around his mouth.

"Oi!" he cried, and the man turned from where he had been about to enter the cafe. Tom couldn't see him from his vantage point, but he could see Charles in full: the thrilled way he had tilted onto his toes to shout, the beaming blue eyes Tom could see all the way from here.

"What?" Lensherr called back, gruffness trying to drown out his actually cheerful tones.

Charles tipped back onto his heels and dropped his hands, tilting his head coyly.

"I love you!" he replied.

Lensherr was quiet for a long moment and then laughed back: "Get out of here, you ponce!"

Charles threw his head back and laughed and turned to walk off, tossing over his shoulder, "See you later, baby!"

"Don't call me that!" Lensherr laughed back and Tom could hear the bell chime as the front door opened.

He got up immediately and followed the man inside, flipping back his hood and ducking inside just as Lensherr was wrapping a dark red apron around his incredibly slim hips and moving behind the cash register, pushing the Spanish-looking girl there away.

"Time for a break, angel," he sing-songed to her and took the next person in line with a wide smile. Tom understood now, the shark moniker. He stepped up close beside the line and pretended to read the black-board menu above the bar, but really just listened as the girl ignored her break in order to mine Lensherr for information along with the blond boy running the espresso machine.

"Did you tell him finally?" she asked avidly and Lensherr's smile widened still further, if that were possible, so that Tom could glance and see all his sharp teeth.

"It came up, yeah," Lensherr admitted and the two kids shouted for joy and grabbed each other, jumping wildly and twisting in circles with excitement.

"What's this about?" the first customer in line laughed.

"They're psychos," Lensherr explained with a roll of the eyes.

"He loves his boyfriend!" the blond boy crowed, hugging his dance partner around the middle and spinning her hard, knocking her feet into the cupboards loudly.

"Put her down," Lensherr growled.

"Congratulations," the customer cheered and extended a hand. Lensherr looked as if he'd ignore it for a moment but ended up taking it, one pump, strong, and then let loose.

"What'll you be having?"

Tom turned and went to the end of the line to order, keeping an eye on Lensherr. Quick, pragmatic, minimum of socializing. Nothing like Charles at all...

The place was efficient once the kids stopped cheering and hugging each other and the line passed quickly. The girl went on her break and Lensherr took orders with little-to-no nonsense, although the boy made the drinks while dancing he was so happy.

When it was Tom's turn the tall man hardly looked at him, writing notes in sharpie on the last person's cup and handing it to the blond.

"Stop dancing and start steaming," he growled behind himself, and the blond technically stopped although he was still tapping his feet joyfully.

Then the man looked up at Tom with bored gray eyes and said, "Well? What are you having?"

Tom noticed he didn't say 'What can I get for you'. His gaze was businesslike, nothing inviting about them or conducive to conversation. How were he and Charles together? How had they stayed together for six months? How did Charles love him? The gaping confusion of the situation was jarring, but Tom worked past it.

"Um, yeah, do you guys, like, have wifi?" Tom asked, proud that his voice came out appropriately lazy.

"The code'll be on your receipt after you tell me what you're having," Lensherr replied, staring him down even though Tom was taller than he was. Actually the eyes were either green or blue, and Tom hated that he couldn't pin them down to a discernible color.

"Great. I'll have an iced Americano." Tom didn't say please, just grinned boyishly. Lensherr stared back at him flatly, for so long that Tom desperately wanted to fidget but wouldn't let himself.

Finally the man sighed and rolled his eyes. "What _size_?"

"Tall," Tom grumbled back. The blond at the machine turned slightly after putting up the last drink to whack Lensherr slightly on the angle of his hip.

"Five minutes? You exchange your first 'I love you's and it only buys you five minutes of enough happiness to not be an awful jerk?" the boy balked.

The shark growled at him wordlessly, curling his lip and handed him Tom's cup.

"That'll be three dollars," Lensherr said, but didn't snarl at him so Tom figured that was him trying to be nicer. The hand he extended was long and lean and Tom couldn't stop himself from seeing it on the nape of Charles' back under his T-shirt. He wondered what those fingers would look like broken, pushed the thought aside as a distraction to his task.

Tom let him keep the change from a fiver so that the man wouldn't complain when Tom stayed the rest of the day using up his wifi. The act didn't earn him any conversation points as he stood waiting for his drink: when he asked "'S gonna be a gorgeous day today, huh?" Lensherr ignored him as if Tom couldn't possibly be talking to him.

"Oh, yeah, it'll be perfect now that the boss is so thrilled," the blond laughed, icing up a cup.

"This is him thrilled then?" Tom questioned.

"This is him fucking ecstatic," the boy said and handed Tom his drink.

"Get back to work," Lensherr growled and the boy gave Tom a long-suffering look but grinned and went wipe down tables while it was quiet.

Tom didn't bother to try and talk to Lensherr; he could tell it would only draw unappreciated attention to himself. Instead he simply chose a table close to the counter so he would be able to overhear the man's interactions with people he actually knew, the only ones he was apparently capable of having conversations with. Tom would just have to get a handle on the man's personality through hearsay, since the guy apparently knew the tenets of Stranger Danger enough to refuse to speak to him.

Tom spent most of the morning IMing Rosamond, Lensherr's teenage neighbor. He and the girl had been talking for a long time since it took teenage girls these days so fucking forever to fall in love with their computer counterpart enough to agree to meet in person. He had already made sure her parents would be well out of the way tonight. It spoke to her inestimable love of him that she was not apparently nervous about their meeting. Still, it never hurt to check up on things.

When he was done talking to her and solidifying times for when he'd come over and when her parents would leave, and then on top of that doing all the other goofy romantic chit-chat that took up so much of his time with her, he logged off and went to work. Official work, that was. He was so busy with his extracurriculars, first Robbie and now this, it was sometimes hard to remember than he had an actual official job he still had to put in time with.

Mr. Ryking seemed to be picking up on the fact that Tom's head wasn't all that in the official game these days, based on his terse email. In actuality, Tom wasn't technically supposed to be in town at all. All that trouble last time had of course gotten back to Carter (everything got back to Carter in one way or another), and the man had said maybe it would be a good idea to stay away from the city for a while. Tom knew that Carter wouldn't be happy to find him back here, but it was the man's own fault for being so vague: what did 'a while' mean, anyway? Why add 'maybe'? And in any case, Carter couldn't tell him where to spend his vacations, could he?

Tom had weighed the pros and cons of this trip for a long time and had the balance sheet clear in his mind. He had made a mistake with Harvey, coming right out and saying hello before he had even known if the man was worth the consequences, and he hadn't been. He wouldn't act again until he was sure of Erik and Charles' relationship. If it was nothing he could hop a plane back home and no one would be the wiser. If it did require more activity, it would be worth possibly losing his job over (but what were the chances that Ryking would fire his most valuable employee over a vacation to a city he had only been mildly warned against?).

He still wasn't sure what scenario he hoped for. Or rather, he knew that with self-preservation being what it was he should be hoping Erik and his Charles was only a fling, wouldn't require him to risk his job. But actually he was on the scent of a great game, perhaps the newly-minted best of his life, and dangerous as that game could be he couldn't bring himself to hope for its cancellation. He'd just have to hope that Charles' psychological breakdown and implosion was just as worth unemployment today as it had been worth all the family drama of ten years ago.

In the meantime he could only focus on the present and await the future.

He eavesdropped with his full attention, pulling out his notebook to write down anything of real importance that came up. The girl quickly became his favorite since she had a knack for asking useful questions, even though she didn't dig after the answers with the proper tenacity. She seemed perfectly all right with allowing Lensherr to ignore any questions he didn't feel like answering. Apparently he was in a sharing mood, though, thank providence, because he rarely turned down her inquiries.

"So that's why you had Azazel and Janos both working yesterday!" she teased. "You wanted a day off to soak up all that lovin."

"Charles set that up," the man begged off.

"I heard that's not all he set up," Alex cackled. "What was this Sean was telling me about a fancy dinner? A towncar picking you up from the cafe?"

"Don't forget the adorable CD he made," the girl added.

"Oh my god, where is that? We need to put that on!"

"Do it and I'll drown you in the sink!" Lensherr growled and Tom glanced around so he could see what the man's face looked like angry; he'd need it to gauge later on.

Brows furrowed, teeth bared, lip curled back in a snarl. Tom felt that he could do better and should things work out with this spying he would put his hypothesis to the test.

"Only someone with your luck, Lensherr, could have babysitting duty on what should be the most lustful weekend of your existence after one's honeymoon," the girl sighed.

"It's not that lustful of a weekend," Lensherr shrugged, smiling widely.

"You mean you got it all out of your system yesterday," Alex said, making a grossed-out face.

"Well, I don't think I'll ever get it _all _out my system," Lensherr laughed, and they way he tilted his head back with it, the long line of his throat and the white shine of his numerous teeth was gorgeous and Tom hated him for a moment before he got a handle on himself.

If things worked out he could bring this man to his knees right alongside Charles. In fact, even if they didn't work out...After all, this plan's cancellation only meant that he had to wait until _Charles _was more ripe for the plucking. He could take Lensherr any old time, whether Charles was ready or not.

The conversation went on through interruptions and lunch breaks and customers and work, but Tom pieced it together well in his notebook. Moira had a hot date tonight, hot enough for her to pawn Kevin off on his godfather, Charles, and the boyfriend for the night. Charles was coming at three and Lensherr would drive the three of them to the park at Blue Lake, which Tom only knew from the map was to the West. Not the park with the hipsters (whom the man seemed to think of as a sort of sub-human vermin), but the good one with the old-school playground. Apparently there was a swimming area there, but Lensherr refused to say if they would be going for a dip, and the girl didn't force him to answer.

A memory came unbidden to his mind: Charles and him at the lake house, slipping out of the house in the dark and skinny dipping off the pier, the way he had held the piling with one hand and Charles with the other. The night was cool even though the day had been sweltering and they shivered slightly together, although, for Tom at least, it had been the texture of the night rather than the temperature: the hard grain of the wood, the soft slip of Charles' skin and the brush of his hair and the heat of his mouth on Tom's, the slick slide of his tongue.

He shook the reverie off himself roughly and scratched his palms to get rid of the lingering sensation of water-lapped wood and silken skin. He had lost track of Lensherr's conversation and pushed up from his chair angrily. For this sort of slip to happen to him now of all times! Just when he needed his wits the most about him they started letting through thoughts, _memories _like that!

He shoved his laptop into his backpack and left without busing his own table.

It was nearly 1 and it wouldn't do for Charles to catch him at the cafe, or anywhere for that matter, so he took a walk around the district to clear his head and waste time until three when he could stake the place out enough to follow Lensherr and Charles to the lake. He didn't want to spend the entire evening trying to figure out which park was the right one and where Charles was located in it.

Wasted time would only draw this thing out longer and he wanted to know _now _what Charles' feelings towards that cafe oaf were. 'I love you's didn't mean much to Tom-Harvey and Charles had exchanged them often enough and maybe it had even been true, but if it was it wasn't the kind of love that changed one's world. It wasn't anything like what he and Charles had had together, he knew that. It had been disappointing to find that out about Harvey, but also a little flattering: that Charles didn't love Harvey like he had loved Tom. His heart fluttered anxiously in his chest to think of what Lensherr and Charles might have together.

He wanted Charles to love Lensherr as much as he had loved Tom, he knew that, that was the only reason he was here at all. Only when Charles loved like that again could he be hurt like that again. But a rebellious part of Tom that didn't know anything about schemes and strategy wanted this to be a hoax, a false alarm, a mistake. It wanted Tom to retain his title for Charles' most-loved, most-adored, it wanted to remain the biggest thing in Charles' life for the _rest _of his life. It didn't want any sharky German immigrants going after his belt, his crown, his rule.

At two-thirty he called his driver and went to the soup and sandwich place across from Cafe Haifisch to set up shop at one of the tables they had set up along the sidewalk. He took off his hoodie and put on a baseball cap and it was amazing the difference this made on him. Even if Charles or Lensherr did remember the guy tying his shoes that morning, or the Americano kid at the cafe, he didn't think they'd recognize him now.

He tucked into his sandwich and took a book out so he'd look like a busy college student rather than a stalker when Charles came by around three. Considering that Machiavelli had written with a pen inked in sarcasm, he had gotten a lot of things incredibly spot-on, it seemed to Tom. When he looked up later to scope out the length of 19th, he could make out Charles' tell-tale mop of hair waiting for the light to get him over the border of campus. There was a small child with him, but from two blocks away Tom couldn't make out much.

He made himself appear completely involved in his book and didn't take his eyes off Charles for the whole two blocks. He was talking to the boy, smiling gaily, and they stopped on the sidewalk for a second for Charles to help the kid take off his sweatshirt and put it in his backpack. The boy was skinny and tanned like every kid in the summer, with sandy blond hair and scuffed knees. They were dressed similarly in T-shirts, shorts, and sneakers, Charles with his leather shoulder-bag and the kid with a dinosaur backpack by the look of it. Maybe dragons...

Charles put his hand on Kevin's shoulder as they crossed the busier street to the cafe rather than hold his hand, and Tom could hear them talking.

"Is it the park with the spinning wheel?" the kid asked.

"You mean the roundabout? Of course! Erik still hasn't given up on making you lose your lunch on that thing," Charles responded, holding the door open for the boy.

Tom couldn't hear them anymore so he watched through the big windows. His angle didn't allow him to see behind the counter, but he didn't need to as Lensherr came around to meet them, immediately throwing Kevin over one shoulder in a makeshift fireman's carry and then controlling his ear-to-ear grin long enough to lean in and kiss Charles on the lips.

Tom wondered if Charles thought Lensherr was a good kisser, or if he wished it were Tom he was kissing. Charles had always told him that he was the best kisser, although technically at that point Charles had never kissed another boy before...

He shook those thoughts away since they wouldn't get him anywhere and watched as Charles greeted various people before Lensherr set Kevin down and dragged the smaller man bodily from the cafe by way of an arm around his waist.

"We should stop by the store and buy some strawberries for our picnic," Charles pointed out, holding Lensherr's hand as they walked down the sidewalk towards Charles' house. Tom smiled accidentally, remembering how Charles pronounced 'strawberries' in a way that almost sounded like 'straw-burries'.

"No, ice cream!" Kevin begged.

"Nobody asked you," the shark pointed out, pushing Kevin by the head with a big grin.

Tom got his things together and met his car on the corner, and started his trek out to Blue Lake, with a short pitstop at the grocery store.


	2. Tom, Part 2

The men set up their picnic gear in the shade between the playground and the lake, Lensherr shaking out the blanket and Charles and Kevin setting out their wares. Tom was too far away to hear anything but it wasn't really necessary to hear so long as he could see how the two men interacted.

Kevin jumped and skipped giddily to the roundabout at the sunny playground and climbed aboard joyfully, hopping impatiently while Charles and his boyfriend approached at a more leisurely pace. When they arrived Charles climbed up with Kevin, holding the poles on either side of the boy and thus herding him to the center. Lensherr made a show of stretching and Tom realized the man was very long-limbed.

Charles made a motion to get on with it and Lensherr turned, holding the edge of one pole and giving it a testing back and forth push and pull. Kevin leaned around Charles' protective body to say something to the older man and Lensherr nodded back before heaving the wheel into motion, deftly grabbing a pole at every go-around and flinging it further with the whole of his weight in it.

Tom could hear Kevin's shrieking laughter from here and imagined he could hear Charles' as well. Lensherr stood back to admire the blurry motion of his handiwork and when it slowed down slightly he jumped on himself, struggling drunkenly to the proper wedge of space and fitting himself tightly behind Charles although with the dizzying motion Tom couldn't tell how tightly.

That went on for quite a while, sometimes Lensherr doing the spinning and sometimes Charles. Once Kevin forced the two of them to stay aboard as he amateurishly ran alongside the wheel to spin it rather than staying in one spot and shoving the poles as they went past.

It was slow, and Tom could see the two men kissing leisurely on the thing until Kevin made them stop.

When other kids came to get on Charles made a motion back to their effects and returned alone, collapsing on the blanket and sitting up to watch Erik get relegated to wheel-pusher for a bunch of screaming children.

Lensherr managed to escape after a long while and stumbled to join Charles, panting and sweating and chagrined. Charles laughed at him and Tom could hear its light playful tone from here as Lensherr collapsed down to lie next to the brunet. The smaller man lay down beside him, propped up on one elbow and leaning over enough to kiss Lensherr slowly and thoroughly. Lensherr's long hand came up to rest on Charles' jaw. Tom looked away but he wasn't sure why: it was just this sort of interaction he had come to see. How was he going to be able to tell if Charles and the shark were really serious if he kept looking away like a blushing bride?

So he turned back, watching resolutely as Lensherr sat up fanning himself and apparently grumbling some sort of complaint. It was no wonder the man was overheated, really: Tom was hot even in his shorts and T-shirt and the German man was still dressed in his jeans and polo from work. Charles turned and rummaged through his bag for a second, coming out with a tube of sunscreen. Then he knelt between Lensherr's bent legs and applied it to the older man's face, not able to resist laying another kiss and Tom realized he was gritting his teeth, forced himself to stop it.

Kevin ran up then, grabbing Lensherr by the wrist and tugging on him hard, pointing at the tire swing, but Lensherr gave a hard tug back, toppling Kevin to the blanket and tickling him for a minute before collapsing back into a lie and pushing Charles forward with his foot.

Kevin seemed fine with the trade-off, scrambling up and tugging Charles forward to the tire-swing instead. The brunet made them pause long enough to apply sunscreen on the both of them and then followed easily enough, glancing back at Lensherr and grinning when the tall man blew him a sarcastic kiss.

The German man stayed laying until he recovered from his possible heat stroke, then sat up only enough to drink his weight in water. There was no point in watching while they were apart, but Tom felt his eyes drawn back to Charles' figure in the sunlight regardless. He only managed to distract himself with his book by thoroughly convincing himself that Charles was too far away to see really clearly. At this distance it could really be anyone, there was no telling it was Charles rather than any other similarly sized man.

He read a few chapters, glancing up every now and then as Charles was mobbed by children wanting a turn getting spun on the swing. When the man finally extricated himself and started to amble back to Lensherr, Tom put his book away to pay attention, wishing a playground was an acceptable venue for his binoculars. He squinted under his ball cap, trying to make out Charles' features as he walked back. Did he look wistful? Pensive? Adoring? _As _adoring as he had always looked around Tom?

Lensherr was sitting up and asked Charles something as he approached and Charles' body went all coy, twisting his shoulders almost childishly and scuffing the toe of his Keds in the ground. What had Lensherr asked that brought about that effect? It was driving Tom crazy, so he got up and pretended to walk the trail that meandered between the men's picnic and the lake.

As Tom walked Charles moved around behind his boyfriend, holding the man between his thighs and wrapping his arms around Lensherr's shoulders so tightly Tom could see the strain from here, leaning into his body and kissing the side of his face. Lensherr in return held on with both hands to Charles' arms around him and bent with the weight of Charles' body as if it were a weight he'd always want to carry.

Tom's heart crashed against his breastbone so hard and unrelenting that he couldn't breathe past its intrusion and found himself leaning against a tree gasping for breath. This set off a chain reaction and the blood thundered through his ears, his brain, until it felt like his mind was pressing at the bounds of his skull. His face, his skin, felt flushed and hot and tacky with sweat and his limbs felt far away and unresponsive.

Somehow he managed to turn, to stumble, to track down his car and collapse fully across the backseat, still wheezing for every little breath.

Charles had always said that Klimt was the most romantic painter, was one of the few people who could adequately get across passion, adoration, love, and that it was all in the clutch of the hands, the most expressive hands in the art kingdom. And in the same way Tom could tell by the clutch of Charles' arms around the man's shoulders, the grasp of the man's hands on Charles' arms, what they were together.

And what they were was fresh for the picking. He just had to remember who tended this crop, who was in control. And for some reason, at the moment it a hard concept to hold onto. For some reason he felt terrified, as if he were the fruit about to be picked.

He felt much better after a cold shower in his hotel-room. It was the heat, of course. Tom had never done well in the heat. In fact the first time he had ever met Charles, at that track meet Sophomore year, Charles somehow still fresh after the hurdles, Tom sweating after the javelin, he had nearly fainted from heat stroke. Chris had had to take him home, and it was he that invited Charles over for a swim after the match. If it hadn't been for that Tom probably would have slunk away in humiliation-he was easily mortified like that in those days-but instead he got to recover in the cooling waters of the pool and get to know Charles, who somehow managed to give Tom every ounce of his attention while still not excluding Chris.

He was convinced that Charles was amazing like that in those days. Tom had bought it completely, that for once someone was more interested in him than his brother. When he figured out that Charles made _everyone _feel this way it made that first experience feel inestimably cheapened. Charles had an evil knack for tricking people into thinking they were his whole world, but how many people could be a man's whole world? And how could Tom think the feeling legitimate when the boy or girl or teacher or cashier was _equally _convinced that what they had with Charles was unique beyond words?

But he wasn't thinking of that now. He was thinking of what to wear. It was hard to look too professional, too clean-cut, without making himself look older. Somehow he had to keep that young-twenties boyishness while maintaining enough class for Rosamund not to take him for a bum or a loafer.

When he arrived he saw that Rosamund's parents were away, as planned, but also that Charles and the shark weren't back yet. So he bided his time with the lithesome teen he'd been slowly seducing via keyboard for the last few months and tried to hold back on these unrequested thoughts. Having Rosamund around to impress helped to take his mind off things.

Lensherr's house looked pretty big for the area: two stories, a patio, a garage on the left and what appeared to be a sort of tool shed or the like tucked back on the right. It had a quaint walkway and was pristine in gun-metal gray, blue trim fresh and well-maintained. Tom loathed it, and focused on Rosamund to avoid spray-painting choice words on that immaculate paint job.

She wasn't nervous like he'd thought she'd be. She seemed either perfectly capable of taking care of herself or perfectly ignorant of the danger he posed. They played chess, which Charles had taught him to play in the most tantalizing way possible back when he was seventeen, and discussed high-brow things like the soul and fate and love. She was one of _those _teenagers. For how academic Charles had always been, he never wasted alone time playing the philosopher. He wasted those sorts of conversations on people he was not actively trying to have sex with.

It had annoyed Tom at the time, even though he couldn't blame the boy. When that much sneaking around was necessary to get you into a position to fuck, why on earth would you waste it talking about Sartre? But Charles had never understood that he was the only person Tom could discuss deep things with, the only person who listened or thought. Well, that's what Tom had imaged at the time at least. In truth Charles was just a good actor that had led him to believe that he was interested in anything more than sex.

Rosamund didn't seem to have anything so base on her mind, and he suspected she was testing his fortitude: holding off on anything as sultry as showing an ankle until he broke down and begged her for sex and proved himself a slut. If only she could have known that his fortitude was in no way tested by having her playing chess and discussing Rand instead of bringing him to her bedroom. He needed her for her proximity to Lensherr's house, not for her body, and it was a body he had no interest in even as an after-thought despite all its nubile charms.

Girls had never really interested him. They went into the game thinking they held all the cards because of their sexuality: he was a boy and they were girls and that was all the background they needed to think that he would do whatever they wanted him to do. With men it was so much more a game of cat and mouse: this man was attractive, did this man find men attractive? Could he make this man find men attractive? How much work would go into it? How much would the guy just tear himself apart in the morning if Tom _did _manage it?

So he wasn't surprised that Rosamund was being a cocktease even though his cock was not teased by her teasings. He just bided his time and tried to focus on what she was saying at the same time as considering what he was going to do now that this plan of his had somehow come to fruition.

He had been telling himself for weeks, months even, not to get his hopes up. Not to plan too far ahead so that he wouldn't be too crushed if all that planning came to naught. To have all those plans suddenly very much on the table boggled his mind to the point where it could scarcely function. This day was the culmination of a decade of patient waiting, of years of strenuous research and vicarious stalking, of private eyes and Googling and scrapbooking. He was elated, he knew he was elated, somewhere, deep inside him. But he was also confused and turned about and torn and anxious and all of the things that it would not be helpful to be when embarking on such an important undertaking. He needed all his wits about him and instead half his wits were quailing about, shivering as if feverish, mucking him up.

There was the self-preservative thought of giving this thing up for the moment, coming back when he was more sure of his stamina. But of course he couldn't do that. Charles' destruction was a gravitational pull and now that he was in its orbit he couldn't escape it. He had to go through with this thing, he had to, he had to _win_...

Charles had a loving disposition. He loved a lot of people. He loved Raven and Moira and the librarian at the school and the bum on the corner. It was one of the things that had enraged Tom so much when he finally saw clearly enough past the burning haze of first love to make it out. Charles loved him, but that love was diluted by every other person in his life.

Tom had no one in his life. He had a brother who was not actually his brother and a father who was not actually his father and a mother who was not actually his mother. He had the life they built for him that was not actually his life. And then he had Charles. And Charles had been everything, had been all of his love and all of his life and he had pretended to himself that Charles, deep darling that he was, was capable of that depth of emotion, too. But he wasn't. He was a shallow bastard just like every other bastard in the world, and he had deserved everything Tom had done to him, he deserved it a hundredfold, he deserved enough for Tom to do it to him all over again, for Tom to do it a million times over.

And as much as he didn't want to remember these thoughts while trying to keep engaged with Rosamund's esoteric conversation, there was another thought he didn't want around him even more: the strain of Charles' arms around Erik's shoulders. The beam of his smile and the gleam of his eyes and the way the man _shone_. He didn't remember Charles shining like that with him, like a bright star, the type idiots wished on. He told himself sternly that it had been a long time ago, he wasn't capable of remembering everything about the man. But a sinister small part of him whispered that maybe the man had never shone like that with him, that maybe Charles simply had never loved him the way he loved Erik. That maybe Charles had always been capable of loving to the depths Tom had imagined, but that Tom had just never been able to drive him to it. And that Erik could.

Tom shoved the thoughts as far away as he could, buried them bitterly, angrily, almost snarling even in front of Rosamund. It was a ridiculous thought. Charles had loved him to his full capacity, had loved him with his full heart. Erik didn't have anything Tom hadn't had and deemed unsatisfactory, had tossed away. All Erik had was Tom's refuse. And anyway, no matter what Erik had, he wouldn't have it for much longer. Tom would see to that.

Once Rosamund was properly drugged and disabled Tom carried her up to her room, dropping on her bed disinterestedly and sauntered back downstairs to the dining room which faced directly into Lensherr's living room. With no obvious signs of trauma to impel her to the police, he didn't think Rosamund would want to show off her stupidity enough to tell anyone about tonight. Smart girls were like that: they hated to be proven stupid. Actually, stupid girls were like that too.

The room was dark with the approaching dusk and Tom picked a concealing shadow and settled in whistling quietly to himself, binoculars on hand just in case.

His three subjects were leaned up on the couch like fallen dominoes, Lensherr taking bottom rung pressed into the arm of the couch with Kevin half on top of him and Charles half on top of him. The lanky man's arm maneuvered the back of the couch in order for him to card through Charles' brown hair. Tom wondered if it were still as soft as it had always been in high school.

The were watching TV apparently, lazily staring at a point above the fireplace, but Kevin in his dinosaur pajamas between them was already asleep.

Charles seemed to notice this, too, because he patted Erik's ankle beside him and motioned to the boy, nodded upstairs. Erik must have agreed sleepily for the brunet stood, turning his back to Tom as he lifted the child and started off towards the back off the house-the bedroom must be back there. But actually, as he saw a light go on upstairs a few seconds later, it must be the staircase.

Lensherr in the meantime dragged his jean-clad legs up onto the couch and moved onto his back, stretching to his full length and yawning. He arched his back and his dark polo rode up his long lean waist and he didn't bother to fix it when he relaxed.

Tom realized he was gritting his teeth and forced himself to stop.

The light went off upstairs and soon Charles was returning softly around the back of the couch. Erik's eyes were closed, one long hand on his chest and the other tucked behind his head. Charles smiled at him fondly as he came around the end-table and simply stood at the man's hips and _looked _for a second. Then he bent and slid himself over the man, settling between his stilt-like legs and, using one suntanned hand to tilt the man's jaw, leaned in and ruthlessly plundered his mouth.

Tom swallowed hard, scrambled for his binoculars.

They locked in on the slide of one mouth against the other, at the way Charles would kiss the man deeply and then pull away just enough for Lensherr to follow, gasping forward until Charles allowed himself to be caught. He saw the flash of tongue when Charles licked his way inside the other man's heat. He saw the quiver of the taller man's mouth, the sigh on his lips that was licked away, that was muffled by Charles' teasing kisses.

There was a flash of skin and Tom put the binoculars away to focus on the big picture again: the flash was Lensherr reaching up, clutching Charles with both hands by the shoulders, the throat, the jaw, the hair. Charles' one hand was fisted roughly in the other man's mane, and his free hand was wrapped around to the back of the man's thigh, palming him, gripping him and Tom would have gotten his binoculars to see the details of that grip but that would mean losing the full effect.

Lensherr rocked up into the weight of the smaller man almost desperately even as Charles ground down into him slowly, almost thrust into him: drawing away with an arch of the his back and sliding back into position with a coiling curl, focused directly on the fork of Erik's wishbone legs.

The kissing had picked up in time with their desperate gropings, so that he didn't see how either partner could be getting enough air. He was right apparently: Erik broke away, tilting his head back and away from Charles' ardent mouth to suck in air. That didn't completely stop the smaller man. Charles continued his ministrations against Erik's jaw, his neck, his stuttering pulse point. Erik was saying something, Tom realized, his mouth was moving within its gasps for breath.

Charled looked up at him, listening, and then glanced up at the ceiling. The kid.

He nodded, sitting up off the tall man and pulling the guy up after him. Despite his own advice, Lensherr gripped Charles again, nipped and mouthed at his long neck and Charles tipped his head back, letting him, and gravity cascaded those deeply brown locks back like a waterfall.

The brunet let his hands roam, clutching Lensherr's hands and sliding up to his biceps, to his back, down his spine as far as he could reach and slowly fingering his shirt up in the back. He pushed the man away just enough to pull his polo over his head and and then the rest of the way away, standing and helping Lensherr to stand and then groping and kissing and stumbling their way out of Tom's sight. Probably to the bedroom.

Tom didn't know what he was doing until he was doing it, which was strange for him and, even stranger, he couldn't seem to tell himself to stop what he was doing, or even focus too clearly on why he should stop what he was doing. Even the jarring blow of hitting the ground after jumping the fence wasn't enough to kick him back online, reinstating conversations between his brain and his body. Instead he could only watch in a dull sort of surprise as his legs toppled him out of the plants he had landed on and further into Lensherr's back yard.

The bedroom light was on and the windows were open to offset the heat of the day although they were too far up for Tom to see in. He wasn't even sure if he wanted to see.

He stumbled into the loose dirt and shrubs besides the house and sort of collapsed against the siding, pressing his hand over his mouth before his wheezing pants could give him away. The sounds from inside gradually made their way through the ringing in his ears enough to be heard.

There was the slide of clothes, the thump of them hitting the floor, impassioned kissing and sighs and groans and moans. He recognized which sounds were Charles' automatically because they were the same sounds as in high school, the years hadn't changed that much about him. Tom closed his eyes and he could almost imagine he was not where he was-instead, he was back in high school. Charles had managed to slip his sister and his friends, or Tom's parents and brother were away, or they had simply lucked their way into an abandoned classroom, locker room, attic, anything would do. The shed so long as the gardener was away, the car so long as the chauffeur wouldn't be in, the park bathroom so long as they kept their voices down.

"Quiet, quiet down," Charles would chuckle, just as he was doing now, or Tom would be telling him the same.

It was a hard illusion to keep up with Lensherr groaning and cursing in the background, slipping into German every now and then as Charles did Tom-could-only-imagine-what to him.

"Hold up," Charles hissed breathlessly. "Grab the lube first."

"I don't care, I don't care," Erik groaned.

"Well you _will _care when I get my hands on that arse," Charles teased and Erik sighed but Tom could hear the rattle of a drawer, the snap of a lid.

He grinned, thinking, and that thought brought him back to himself, enough to get him away from there and back to Rosamund's house to clean up before leaving.

He wondered if Charles was still rummaging around with Vaseline, although it was unlikely after a decade. He wondered if some boyfriend had told him or if he'd figured it out on his own, and how long Tom had duped him for. Although duped was perhaps giving him too much credit.

It wasn't exactly his doing that the most innocuous gay porn he could get his hands on was from the 70s and revelled in the use of something so antiquated. In the month or so in which they thought it coolly grown-up to use condoms at all, it had seemed retro and chic and neither one of them had noticed any problems with it. It was simply that when he _did _find out, mere months into their dating, he'd never informed Charles.

At first it was just jealousy: if Charles ever broke up with him he deserved to have snapped condoms for the rest of his life. When _he _actually broke up with Charles he kept the secret purely out of spite and he grinned now thinking for how long that spite had possibly gone on.

It wasn't likely that Reed or Steven would have told Charles about it: they were both ridiculously priggish. Tom wasn't even sure they were physically capable of having actual conversations about lube or condoms or sexual health, period. Hell, he was surprised either of them ever got past their puritanism enough to actually have sex, let alone with another man. And while Harvey was well-meaning and eager, he wasn't exactly the most homosexually savvy of men. Charles had pretty much picked him up straight from the exit ramp of heterosexuality and dropped him back off at the entrance when they broke up. As far as Tom remembered the man was actually engaged to a woman now.

No, if Charles found out from any one person it must be Lensherr, and they had only just started dating so Charles _must _have figured it out himself beforehand: ten years of ignorance was simply too much to hope for, although if this trip had taught him anything it was to dream big.

After all, in ten years of patience he hadn't ever really thought he'd see the day where he could destroy Charles all over again, and yet here he was, simply awaiting the morning before he did just that.


	3. Tom, Epilogue

The first time Tom had met Charles, he had already known of him for months and months. Of all the boys at his preppy suburban high school, the one he most dreamed of seducing was Charles. It was undeniably because of how good he was. The fantasy of convincing the antagonistically heterosexual lacrosse captain to blow him was sub-par when compared to dragging Charles Xavier into homosexual deviance. If normal queer fear was exciting then terrifying Charles Xavier into a questioning of his sexuality was bound to be exhilarating.

For one, Xavier was beloved by everyone, not just the jocks, although they certainly adored him (probably because his mother had an extensive liquor cabinet with no lock on it). Turning Xavier gay would shock the whole school and even the adult society beyond it-it was his dream, his master plan. He never thought he'd get around to it, of course. Mostly this was because he still labored under the idea of pleasing who he assumed at that moment was his actual biological father. He didn't want Daddy to be mad at him, or, rather, any _more _mad at him than he already was for replacing the school's pool chlorine with n-BuLi, or exploding all the toilets in the languages wing, or gluing all the gym lockers shut. That was just good old-fashioned fun. Homosexuality was a bit beyond a simple prank.

The other reason he could never quite manage it was because he actually had an extremely large and unwieldy crush on Charles Xavier.

He'd rather not have, really. Charles was a sciences whiz whereas he himself thought mathematics was for illiterate heathens who would combust if they attempted to philosophize deeply into the human psyche. The boy was also extremely popular, which Tom detested on principle. Also, he partied with Chris' crew-a bunch of brawny heathens who desired to use alcohol to bring their brain cell count from two down to a lonely one.

The problem, of course, was that Charles was also extremely beautiful. He was slight and lithe like a bird, and seeing him multiple times a week in track together in those indecently short running shorts, more often than not completely shirtless, did extremely arousing things to Tom and his roiling teenage hormones.

Before he nearly fainted at a track meet and Chris had accidentally set them up in the pool, Tom had never once spoken a word to Charles, although he had accidentally listened into plenty of conversations the boy had with his friends.

The shock of actually knowing Charles surprised him directly into love. This was because the Charles he got to know was completely, 100% different than the one he had had every reason to expect to know.

In school he was golden and sunny and outgoing. Yet when Tom tried to surprise him with the sorts of sentences that could be lifted directly from a Smiths album, Charles was less shocked and more moved.

"I know how you feel," the boy murmured to him, close together in the shade by the pool while Chris was on the phone with his girlfriend (one of several at the time).

Tom had stared at him in confusion. He had been talking about not being understood, about feeling outside the fabric of the world, an outsider to the life he had been given. He couldn't help but scoff at Charles' paltry lie.

"Not all that glitters is gold," Charles smiled back to him mysteriously, and dove back into the water.

Tom was interested despite his suspicion, and followed.

They huddled together in the corner of the pool and Charles told him things he'd never told anyone else and Tom was hooked right then and there, like a fish on a line.

Charles didn't feel the need to hide even their courtship. He had already decided he was gay, which was more than Tom had figured out at sixteen, and he actually didn't care who knew it. He believed that being out and proud was a form of social awareness. Before he and Tom were even officially dating Charles had started up a school group devoted to tolerance of all kinds and promoting it wherever and however they could.

Tom had thought being out was social suicide, had considered it as a way to demolish Charles' social standing just the month before, but instead the school rallied around their golden boy, and the only thing that stopped Tom from hating Charles over it was the fact that his home life was less accepting.

His mother's unaffectioJason ambivalence, his step-father's vocal distaste, his step-brother's physical one, it all drove Charles into his arms sobbing and that was the only thing that kept Tom interested. He liked seeing the boy cry, or, rather, liked seeing that his life wasn't as perfect as everyone else thought. It was their own precious secret between the two of them and it made Tom feel closer to Charles than he had ever felt to anyone before in his life. They were both downtrodden by their disparate existences and Tom fell in love with their shared suffering, the drama and the excitement of it.

He never felt closer to Charles than when they were suffering. Tom getting bullied at school because society's acceptance of Charles' homosexuality didn't quite extend to Tom's, Charles sobbing over a fresh blow or cutting word from home, the sad poetry Tom tracked down for them to read together, the sadder songs he knew by heart and listened to together with his teenage love-it was the happiest saddest time of his life.

Even when Charles went to the hospital from something Cain had done to him-Tom didn't remember now, was it a broken arm? Or skull, it was something with his head maybe he thought he remembered-Tom had been ecstatic to visit him, had had to contain his beaming smile at doing something as grown up as visiting your wounded lover in the hospital after a domestic dispute.

When Charles had had to go live with his grandfather in England to stay away from his mother, Tom wasn't necessarily upset. The closeness he felt with Charles could be easily sustained through words-he actually felt closer to Charles when they spoke than when they made love. So Charles suffered at their physical parting but Tom felt he could have kept it up for years if it had been necessary. That should have been his first sign that Charles valued sex more than any emotional connection they had, but he had been too distracted by first love.

Charles convinced his grandfather to let him come back for school, insisting his studies were very important, and maybe they were for all Tom knew. All he cared about was that he got Charles again, more dramatic and tortured than ever as he lived with some steward rather than his own mother in the same county.

They were seventeen and in love and it was marvelous and for the whole year things were perfection itself. Charles' sister got in their way at times, but she went to a different school and so couldn't interrupt them always. Charles' friendships outside himself annoyed him but he was mostly capable of keeping them at bay, of keeping Charles alone to himself.

Then when Charles was nineteen and he was eighteen, everything went sour.

He found out he was adopted, that the life he'd been living was a lie, that the reason he always felt like he didn't belong was because he actually really didn't belong.

He decided he would run away and that Charles would come with him.

That was when the illusion came crashing down, when Charles couldn't keep up with his own sham enough to go through with it, when Tom realized the boy and his love and his adoration had been a lie along with all the rest. That was when he had decided that he would make Charles suffer for his betrayal.


	4. Erik, Part 1

Erik didn't realize he was dozing until his phone woke him up, vibrating terrifyingly against the wooden nightstand. He stretched and looked around before answering. Charles must still be in the shower, the shower he himself was supposed to stay awake waiting up for. It was just after midnight, so it must be one of the kids calling-maybe a problem closing up, some guy who wouldn't leave, or maybe the deposit safe was jammed again...

He yawned and yanked the phone up so it would be quiet, burying his face into the pillows but answering.

"What is it?"

"Erik?" a man's voice questioned and he rolled onto his back (wincing at his sore arse-he'd have to make sure Charles didn't notice, the guy would prep him for hours next time if he found out about this) and glanced at the caller ID.

"Oh, hey Chris," he cheered. He had a good excuse for cheering: he'd just been fucked into a particularly good mood and Chris' call was too surprising for him to build up a bitter defense to.

For all that Chris Odinson was the bastard that had introduced Charles to his evil brother Tom, the guy was pretty alright. It probably helped that Chris was, as far as Erik knew, the sole person in the world to have ever beaten Charles at a drinking game.

"Hey, can you talk?" the burly man asked and Erik blinked away his cheerfulness. If the guy was making sure Charles wasn't in the room then it had to be something to do with Tom.

"Yeah, but I don't know for how long. Charles is in the shower."

"I'll be quick," Chris said in a rush. "You remember how we set up that intervention in Gotham for Tom?"

Erik wracked his brain quickly: Chris and his parents having him and Charles and Raven to dinner up in North Salem at the beginning of the summer, talk turning to Tom, Erik changing the subject when Charles tensed up slightly beside him.

"Yeah I guess I remember."

"Well we just called to make sure everything was still ready for this weekend, and apparently Tom's on vacation."

Erik was silent, waiting for Chris to tell him what this meant. Who the fuck cared if the bastard took vacations or worked all the time or what?

"So?" he finally had to ask.

"Erik, he booked a ticket out to Metropolis."

His blood rather chilled. Metropolis was only an hour away, the closest airport to them...

"Now, I don't want to worry you," Chris added hastily, but Erik thought it was rather late for that. "There was another ticket for the same day going to Rio so there's a chance he's just hiding his hand, going to Brazil..."

"But..."

"But Tom's practically allergic to sunlight. The more likely of the two is Metropolis and Metropolis is just so close to you guys...I don't know, I just wanted to warn you."

"So I guess the intervention's cancelled," he groused.

"Well we're definitely scrambling, but we've already got everyone together, and we don't want to waste the momentum so Dad and I are still trying to track him down to get things underway. I just wanted to warn you, and tell you that if you hear anything from him to tell me."

"Yeah, sure..." he mumbled, thinking. Charles walked through the door, whistling softly, obviously surprised to see him on the phone this late at night. "Hey, I've got to go."

"Don't tell Charles. I don't want to worry him over nothing, I just wanted you to be on guard in case he decides to pull anything."

"Sure, sure. Bye."

"Bye."

"Who was that?" Charles questioned automatically, quirking his eyebrow.

"It was my doctor. I think you broke my ass."

"You jerk," Charles laughed, jumping into bed and smacking his hip.

"I'm serious," he teased, grappling with Charles' wrists to keep himself from getting beaten. "Your gigantic manhood has absolutely wrecked me. I may not be able to have sex for weeks! Maybe even months!"

"Go take a shower before I wreck it again," Charles threatened, but kissed him fondly on the jaw.

In the morning Charles made chocolate chip pancakes (Kevin wasn't their kid so who cared if he had a sugar fit all day?) and Erik stayed out of the kitchen, pulling kid-duty instead: getting Kevin ready for the morning in so much as an adult was necessary to get a 9 year old ready, and made sure he had all his junk together. Erik didn't want to be stepping on toy dinosaurs for the next month like the last time Kevin had spent the night.

"What's wrong with you?" Kevin questioned when Erik's hand slipped and the contents of Kevin's math folder went everywhere.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Erik growled back. Moira had told him to stop cursing in front of her son; he had told her to stop leaving her son around him. This was their stalemate.

"You're acting weird," Kevin said, grabbing his folder back and inserting the papers himself.

"Yeah well you're _looking _weird."

"Am not."

"Are to."

That conversation lasted until they got to the dining room table and Charles forced them to stop.

"If you argue around chocolate chip pancakes they turn into broccoli pancakes, so you guys better cool it," Charles threatened. Erik and Kevin exchanged glances and zipped-lip movements and focused on setting the table.

Charles decorated Kevin's pancakes into a smiley face and Erik's into something a little more...grown up.

"What's that?" Kevin asked automatically.

"Rocket ship," Charles said at the same time Erik said "Torpedo."

"I want a rocket ship!" Kevin whined. Erik gave his boyfriend a 'See what you've done now?' look and the man blushed, focusing on his own meal ("it's a canon").

When they were done Erik and Kevin did the dishes together and he realized Charles had disappeared. He told Kevin to get his shoes and sweater on and went to find the man, looked out the window to spot him talking to Rosie from next door over the fence and went out to join him.

But before he got to them Rosie bolted.

"What's that about?"

"Rosamund's boyfriend jumped our fence to get to her place last night and trampled the flowers," Charles explained, motioning to the mottled lilies by the fence, but he looked distracted.

"Rosie's got a boyfriend? Never told me."

"Isn't it strange how she never shares things with the guy who made her pay a dollar an item to get her toys back from over his fence?"

"I was teaching her responsibility or something," he argued with a shrug.

"You're going to make one interesting father one day, Erik Lensherr," Charles sighed, and put an arm around him and walked him back to the house.

The man seemed on the quiet side today as they dropped Kevin off at Moira's place, and then Erik stopped by the cafe before the movie. Charles had doled out staggering sexual favors in order to get Erik to go see a movie with him. Erik himself didn't believe in public viewing spectacles for anything that would be available to watch in the comfort of your own home with your boyfriend in your lap within the decade. Even though Charles had tactically shown him how much fun an empty, dark movie theatre could be, his affection hadn't quite encompassed _full_, dark movie theatres, which was what this movie was bound to be.

Truthfully, he was hoping one of the kids would just absolutely need him to stay and help out at the cafe so that he would not have to sit through two hours of whatever it was Charles was looking forward to watching. Probably something with mind games. Erik had never seen anyone go so absolutely ape-shit over psychological thrillers before. It was slightly terrifying. He always felt like Charles was taking notes in case these tricks came in handy, whether in thwarting terrorists or slipping detectives or conquering boyfriends, he wasn't sure.

As soon as they walked in the front door he could tell that he might just get his wish. Hank glanced at a tall man standing beside the counter with his back to them and Angel glanced around his shoulder, throwing a glare at the mystery man purely for Erik's benefit.

_This guy's an asshole, _her demonstrative glare told him. _Do your worst. _

So he grinned, new spring in his step, and got ready to do his worst.

When the man turned Erik recognized him as the annoying Americano boy from yesterday and was confused. He looked a lot different now: he seemed taller, older, no boy at all in his matte black suit and tie, some cheesy scarf hanging around his neck under his jacket. More than that, he didn't look like a drugged-up college freak. He looked like someone in Charles' circle: some society darling or bank manager or something.

Erik didn't have time to label anything more in-depth about him though as Charles ground to a shocked halt beside him.

Erik glanced, to see what had stopped his clock, and did a double-take. The Brit was staring at the tall man, eyes showing white all around, like he was looking at a ghost. Protectiveness took over him before understanding could, and he moved his glance to a glare, from Charles to the other man, his arm from around Charles' waist to in front of it, stepping partway before his boyfriend.

"Hullo, Charles dear," the man grinned, completely as if Erik, for all his aggressive posturing, were invisible.

In a small voice from Erik's shoulder, the smaller man took a thin breath and answered, "Hullo, Tom."

Erik twisted to stare at his boyfriend for a moment, at those wide surprised eyes and pale affected face, and then twisted back to catalogue as quickly as possible.

But his mind wasn't up to the task: it couldn't catalogue anything beyond the man's name.

"_You're_ Tom?" he balked.

"How d'you do," Tom grinned at him, and his smile was wane and snobbish and Erik wanted immediately to punch it off his face. More so, he wanted to force the man to look at _him_, to stop staring at his boyfriend like a snake watching a bird.

He stepped fully in front of the brunet, blocking him off from view and only then did Tom seem to snap out of it, his thin grin slipping for just one moment. Erik felt Charles' hands soft and warning on his hips, but ignored them.

"Pleased to fucking meet you. Now get out of my cafe before I call the fucking police."

Tom looked him over from top to bottom, smug, but his eyes were cold-ice blue-as if he wanted a go at Erik just as much as Erik wanted a go at him, which was not as it should be of course. Tom had always seemed like a schemer, and schemes didn't have room for emotions. If Tom was forgetting that then it was a boon for Erik.

"Erik," Charles murmured warningly.

"Hullo there," the man said to him snidely, smiling wide, almost laughing, like this was all a great joke. "You must be my replacement. I say, I do hope you've had fun cleaning up my messes. I didn't return him in the best of states, did I? But then I've always been careless with my toys."

Erik stepped forward, growling, but Charles dragged him back by his belt-loops.

"You promised, Erik! Erik, you promised me: no fighting!"

"You said I'm not allowed to punch your friends!" Erik snarled backwards. "He's not a fucking friend!"

"On the contrary!" Tom laughed. "It's the best of friends that mark you for a lifetime, and I've certainly left my mark-haven't you noticed it?"

Erik lunged again, too strongly for Charles to hold him back, and loved, absolutely _adored_ the feeling of the other man's chintzy suit crumpling under his grip. Tom's face, pasty and thin and sickeningly close to his was a less advantageous maneuver and as soon as he got the chance he threw the man back into the counter, scattering surprised customers and earning quite a few shrieks from all around. Tom just gazed at him, eyes blazing from under his brow, smile a silent snarl.

"I'm calling Moira!" Angel yelped from behind the counter. But Moira had the day off-was all the way in Silver Terrace.

"Call Logan," Erik suggested instead.

"Erik-no!" Charles balked. He knew as well as Erik what kind of murder Logan would bring with him.

"Can't handle me man to man, Lensherr?" the pale man snarled at him, making his blood rise all over again. He jumped forward, fist cocked, but Charles slipped in front of him, digging a shoulder into Erik's diaphragm and shoving him backwards and pushing the air out of him. Charles was lighter than him, and if he had wanted to resort to fighting the smaller man he could have taken him. But he wasn't seeing red quite enough to endanger Charles, and so he relied on trying to slip the man's firm grasp rather than throw him off.

"Let go of me, Charles!" he growled when he got his breath back. Tom sidled to his feet again, stroking his long black hair back over his skull and clearly checking Charles' ass.

Erik snarled, loud enough to rival Logan and thrashed in Charles' grip, forgetting that he meant to not harm the soft-hearted man and shouldering him aside roughly, knocking him into a table and lunging at that scrawny pipsqueak he could definitely take on if only everyone would keep out of his fucking way.

"Hank! Stop him!" Charles shouted and it seemed that the boy was immediately in Erik's path.

"Move the fuck-" but that was as far as Erik got as the meek boy suddenly became so completely unmeek as to grip one hand into Erik's collar and the other into his waistline and lift him bodily from the floor.

Erik was too shocked to react at first-this was the same boy he had once cowed into snitching out Charles' life story with nothing more than a milk thermometer and bravado. This kid flinched from his mildest remonstrance on a weekly basis. But now suddenly he was frowning reprovingly into Erik's quickly reddening face and _carrying _him back away from that flagrant bastard of an upstart.

Everything happened too fast: Hank's sudden turnabout, then the bell of the door ringing and it was Logan and Raven, thank God, here and ready to rescue him and put this punching mission back on track, but Charles was shouting and obviously blocking their way because they weren't dragging him out of Hank's grasp or going after Tom and then they _were _dragging him down and he was coughing and sputtering and Tom was nowhere to be found.

"You're fired!" Erik screamed at Hank automatically, realizing for the first time that boy was taller than him.

"He's not fired!" Charles shouted back, taking a momentary time-out from shouting at Raven and Logan: "What did you think you were doing? Coming here like vigilantes to what: beat up a boyfriend from ten years ago? How old are you two? Do you have any idea how much trouble you could have gotten into?"

Erik was surprised he wasn't getting a similar verbal-beat down and took his freedom to give Hank his own verbal-beat down. "What the hell were you thinking?" he shouted, shoving the boy in the chest, amazed to see that it barely set him back a pace. "You work for me-not him! You don't stop me from beating people up in my own cafe, no matter what your idol shouts at you!"

"If I hadn't stopped you you'd've gotten in trouble," Hank mumbled, tossing his shoulder defensively and moving back behind the counter. Erik followed him.

"That's my problem, not yours!"

"If you go to jail the cafe will close and then I'll be out of a job, so yeah, it is my problem!" Hank argued back, and Hank had never argued with him in his life and Erik was so shocked that he didn't know what to do with the boy anymore so he turned to Angel as she returned from the back room. Tom must have escaped through there...

"And you! Why'd you ever let that creep in here to begin with?" he growled.

"Yeah because you didn't serve him a fucking drink just yesterday!" she balked back.

"The both of you! I'm fucking pissed at the both of you! You're both getting opening shift for the next forever!"

"Yeah well before you get too rough with me you might want to see what I have here," Angel suggested smugly, holding a business card up between her fingers.

He glared at her, but was curious despite himself. "What is it?"

"No morning shift?"

"Fine," he growled. It had been an empty threat anyway. He didn't need Hank _and _Angel to open every morning. "Now give me that."

She did and Erik saw it was the card for some fancy business uptown. It was Tom's. On the back was scrawled, in long spidery handwriting: _Let's finish this. 9:00. Fisherman's Wharf P. 19. _

He tucked it in his pocket quickly before Charles could see him as the man came over to chastise Angel as well.

"How could you call Logan, Angel? You're supposed to be the smart one!"

She put her hands up defensively, much more anxious being chewed out by Charles than by him, her own dear boss.

"I didn't, Mr. Xavier, I swear! I called your sister!"

That got Charles ready to go all over again, turning and glaring at his sister, but Erik held him back by the back of his collar.

"My cafe has seen enough drama for one day. Think of someplace else to bitch at your sister."

"What about a place to bitch at my boyfriend?" the man questioned roughly, turning enough to glare at him.

"Why do you want to bitch at me? I didn't do anything!"

"Only because Hank didn't let you do anything!"

"Same thing."

"Definitely, for sure not at all the same thing," Charles growled at him and seeing those blue eyes blazing like that was really just too eerie. He could see why Angel would prefer he yell at her than Charles. At least with Erik you knew what you were getting was part and parcel of the system. Seeing Charles angry was like witnessing something otherworldly and wrong.

Charles ushered Logan and Raven out of the cafe while they pleaded their case for why he should not be angry with them, and Erik gave his kids one more stern talking to, realizing that Hank was back to normal now that Charles wasn't there to protect him and thus laying into him accordingly.

"I'm sorry," the boy squeaked finally, "that I picked you up and carried you."

Erik blushed up to his ears as Angel barely hid her sniggering, glancing around to cafe to see if anyone else had heard him. If they hadn't heard they had at least seen and he didn't like the sheer number of people suddenly typing or texting furiously.

"We never talk about that again. Ever," he growled, turned on his heel and left.

Charles was waiting for him on the sidewalk, arms crossed over his chest and tapping his foot like an impatient mother. Logan and Raven stood behind him looking wrathful and unruly. God this man would make a terrifying father figure.

Before Erik could say a word, the man flashed a hand out, digging the business card from his pants like a pro pick-pocket.

"You are not doing this," Charles growled, glancing the note over quickly, face flushed with anger.

Erik grinned at him.

"No, I'm not."

His grin and agreement didn't get him out of a Talk, though.

"The three of you have to understand," Charles sighed to them at the dining room table back at his house. "Violence doesn't solve anything. It only causes more problems."

"The only problem it'll cause is trying to figure out where to bury the body," Raven argued vehemently.

"This is out of your hands, Prof," Logan growled. "He's on our turf now."

"All we can do is refuse to get upset by this and he'll lose interest. He works all the way in Gotham; he can't stay here forever. He has to leave sometime."

"And until then he's just allowed to come around and antagonize us, hurt you, and we're just supposed to let him?" Raven balked. "You're not the boss of me, Charles. You can't tell me what to do. When Erik goes to meet him I'm coming along."

"Me too," Logan agreed.

All three of them looked at him expectantly, and so with utmost disinterest he shrugged, tossing them Tom's business card now that he didn't need it.

"Sorry," he yawned. "I can't make it." Then he got up, ambling to Charles' bedroom. They followed him.

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" Raven screeched. He looked at them as if their surprise bewildered him.

"Nothing, just that I'm busy tonight. Any other night of course I'd be there. It's just I have a date tonight."

Charles beamed at him, lunging forward into his arms.

"You'd better be fucking kidding me!" Raven screamed.

"You tried to _kill _him at the cafe, now suddenly you're taking the high road?" Logan balked.

"I didn't try to kill him. If I'd tried to kill him he'd be dead. I just tried to punch him, that's all."

"And if you'd succeeded you'd've ended up in jail and then where would that leave me, a poor little prison widow?" Charles chastised half-heartedly from his wrap around Erik's torso.

Erik shrugged again. "My best friend belongs to the best legal team in the tri-city area, and my boyfriend has the firm on retainer and is dear friends with the chief of police. I figured I had a little bit of leeway as far as physical retaliation went. This is different. This is a trap."

Charles beamed up at him, as if pleasantly surprised that he had managed to work that out on his own, so that he actually felt a bit underestimated by his boyfriend.

"Who consistently beats you at chess, _Liebchen_? I know a trap when I see one."

Charles blushed, tried to look less amazed. "Of course you do. It's just you didn't this morning, playing right into his goading."

Erik shook his head wearily. How to explain this to Charles?

"So long as he's on my property I can probably argue my way out of any hard-handed approach I take to kicking him off of it. The police aren't going to balk too hard at that. This is different: premeditated, pre-negotiated, and pre-set."

"What the hell makes you think it's a trap? What the hell kind of trap can he set-one person?"

"The kind that keeps me in jail just long enough to go after Charles, probably. It's what I'd do."

"Remind me to never break up with you," Charles sighed. Erik grinned and held his shoulder.

"Don't you dare _ever _break up with me," he growled through his smile.


	5. Erik, Part 2

Erik had been planning what to do about Tom since the first time he had heard about him a full six or seven months ago. Of course most of those plans revolved around how to kill him and not get caught. Or how to aid Raven and Logan in killing him without getting caught. By Charles he meant, of course. Police didn't scare him half as much as his boyfriend. Police could be swayed, bribed or beaten at their own game in a court of law (and with Emma on his side that was pretty much a certainty). Charles was justice itself: blind, unfair (in this instance), and unappeasable. It said a lot about how much Erik wanted Tom dead that he still even considered trying to subvert that justice.

Learning about a guy who had once passed out a sextape of your boyfriend to the entire student body had a way of making you contemplate murder at all costs, after all. Add to that the fact that this particular man had also cheated on him at his mother's funeral, gotten him kicked off the college track team for faked drug use, and left him tied naked to his bed until a passing maid thankfully (albeit traumatizingly) released him, and it drove you to something a bit crueler than easy death, something involving vivisection or slow torture.

But Erik had never been able to _really _figure out if it was worth it. Not when you looked at it written down (as he had often done). Would he give up dating Charles for the right to murder Tom? Charles would definitely break up with him for murder, he well knew. Erik wanted to keep dating Charles. So he tried to figure out the absolute most damage that he could do without getting broken up. It didn't go that far. Charles had extremely low tolerance for physical violence, and physical was the only sort of violence that enticed him when it came to Tom. So he had gone about getting a physical revenge upon Tom that did not stem directly from his fists and which Charles thusly could not break up with him for.

And, as with everything Erik set his heart on, he had figured it out.

Even that first night he'd heard about Tom, Raven had said that Chris would be all too willing to beat his brother to a pulp, assuming Charles asked him to. That was out of the question, of course, but it still left the option of Tom stepping out of line. If Tom started something then Chris was ready and willing to finish it, whether Charles wanted him to or not. As Tom's brother, Chris had that right.

Erik hadn't minded waiting around for Tom to start something, hadn't even gone out of his way to _entice _Tom into starting something. He had considered it, of course, goading Tom into coming out here and starting enough trouble that Chris had to put an end to it. But he had finally decided against it. He didn't want to request Tom to harass his boyfriend, after all. He'd just keep Chris on speed-dial in the event that it happened on its own.

Now that it had happened, he texted all available info to the blonde man and told him to get his crew ready at Pier 19 at 9pm. It was only an added bonus that Chris had been planning this intervention: it meant that he'd have more people around to help him beat up Tom should things go that way (and any time you had Tom and Chris together in a room it seemed as if things were already half-primed to go that way). In addition to that he put Logan and Raven in contact with the burly man. Maybe they could be of use in this intervention as well. At the very least they would be able to push a situation that was already walking the tightrope between actual intervention and technical bloodbath into _certain_ bloodbath. Raven also had a knack for videotaping things on her phone, so maybe he'd get some still-shots for his laptop or something.

Erik left around seven to check on the cafe and call Chris. Everything was going according to plan, although it was too early to tell how the night would end of course. Still, things looked promising. Erik wished he could have gotten at least one punch in, of course, but Chris had agreed to take Logan and Raven in (proof that the man had never been very set on this intervention not turning into an excuse to beat his brother up) so he could live vicariously through them. He didn't feel badly about keeping any this from Charles.

If the man had known about the 'intervention' he would want to go, be there for Tom, all sorts of ridiculousness, and things never had the real opportunity to turn bloody with Charles around. Chris backed him up on this mainly because Charles was simply too choice a target. Tom would never be able to ignore his presence enough to focus on anything else that was going on, like how pissed Chris was with him.

"Who's all going?" Erik asked Chris through the phone when he called to check on the intervention's status.

"Me, Raven, Logan, Rory's sister Natalie, Wesley's brother Clint...I don't know if Bruce is going to be able to make it, he was looking pretty green in the face back at the hotel. Tony said he'd be there but I'll believe it when I see it."

Erik was surprised. "Stark? He hasn't seen Charles since he moved out West." (And how shocked he had been to learn that of all the people Emma had tried to set him up with, a full two of them had already known Charles).

"Yeah, but they've always kept in touch, or as much as Tony keeps in touch with anybody. You know how Charles is-once he makes friends with you he never lets you go," Chris laughed. Erik grinned back, agreeing even though he scarcely considered Tony and Charles to be friends. The narcissistic man was about ten years older than Charles, after all, and the most you could say was that Tony used to go to Charles' house to get drunk and that they had once drunkenly kissed, although Erik wasn't sure that Stark remembered this at all.

"Aren't your parents going?"

"Wellll they don't exactly know we're doing it _tonight_. If they came this thing would just turn into a coddling-fest. After the stunt he pulled with you today, Tom needs a little tough love, I think."

Erik's grin widened. He was happy to hear that he had left this task to more than capable hands.

So he and Chris said their goodbyes and Erik wished him luck and he whistled all the way home. The only way this could be better was if he had managed to get his one punch in at the cafe. Now everyone was going to get a turn going after Tom except him.

Turning down Tom's invitation did come with the bonus of making Charles very very pleased with him, though.

When he got back, around eight, the man nearly leapt into his arms.

"What, did you think I'd lied to you?" he questioned, hugging the man back.

"Well, not _thought_," Charles murmured back shyly, pulling away enough to fiddle with Erik's T-shirt. He couldn't resist, pushed up onto his toes to kiss Erik more happily than passionately.

"It's okay you think I'm a liar," Erik growled teasingly. "You can make up for it by making me dinner." He slapped Charles' ass, making him yelp slightly, shoved him into the kitchen.

"You're hungry?" Charles balked, surprised. Erik rarely was and he had already eaten breakfast that morning.

"It must be that reaming you gave me last night. Who knew getting fucking through the mattress left you with such an appetite?"

"We should do a scientific study into the effects," Charles hummed deeply, coming close enough to run his palm up the back of Erik's thigh, grabbing his ass. "We can do more research tonight."

"Are you allowed to do overlapping studies? I want to find out how hard you have to fuck me before I develop a limp."

Charles groaned into his throat, rutting against him gently, squeezing him roughly. Erik pulled back, taking Charles' face between his hands and tilting his head slightly, licking his way inside Charles' mouth with an intensity that Charles' body against his only increased.

Charles made him homemade nachos and even agreed to put way more sour cream than was culturally acceptable to Mexicans. As nine came and went the man's good mood continued to increase, pushing him so far into gratitude that he sat down to watch a war documentary with Erik, something he normally put off as 'morbid'.

Settling back with his head resting in Charles' lap to get his hair carded through and his scalp massaged, he was about catatonic from pleasure but still somehow managed to speak.

"I'll have to not beat up ex-boyfriends more often," he hummed happily.

"So positive reinforcement does work then," Charles chuckled in reply. "Shame, if this didn't work I was going to try spanking."

They were both startled when someone started angrily, or frantically, knocking at the door. Erik looked up at Charles and the man was staring back in equal confusion.

"Did Raven lock herself out?"

"It's only nine thirty-there's no way she and Logan could be done getting drunk already." Erik was confused for a second, then remembered that the two had put off their disappearance as the desire to drink their woes away. He hastily nodded in agreement, hoping Charles was too distracted to catch his slip.

As the knocking continued, or maybe the person had moved on to kicks, Erik got up to see who it could be. Charles followed along, even though Erik told him to stay back.

So they opened the door side by side, and it was only blind luck that when Tom toppled inside he clutched himself around Charles' legs rather than Erik's.

"Jesus!" the brunet balked, catching himself from being knocked over with a hand to the door frame. Erik caught his other flailing arm, holding him upright until he could get his legs back from Tom, battered and bruised and bleeding and groaning into Charles' bare shins.

"Tom!" he gasped next. "What happened to you?"

"Your kraut boyfriend, that's what happened to me!" Tom wailed and Erik quirked his head.

He had assumed that the man would try to pin it on him, of course, but he had had no idea that the man would try to do it even though he had _obviously _had nothing to do with it. He was continuously disappointed that _this _was the man that had managed to do so much damage to Charles. He had liked to believe that it took some sort of miracle of intellect to pull it off and it was terrifying to discover than any two-bit hack could do the job. It meant that _he _could do the job if he wasn't careful.

"Tom," Charles reasoned, pulling his legs out of Tom's clutch. "Erik's right here."

Tom stilled, pulled back to look and Erik grinned down at him happily.

The whole side of his face was one big bruise, along with a cut along his right cheekbone that was bleeding and pleasing Erik to no end. He was dirty and sweaty and bloody and looked marvelously thrashed; his eyes were a puffy antagonistically irritated red. God, he hoped Logan had managed to get the thing on tape or something.

"Guten abend," he grinned, wiggling his fingers in a hello.

The man glared at him through his swollen lids and fell back, clutching his ribs and moaning.

"What are you doing here, Tom?" Charles groaned, kneeling down beside him and petting him carefully. Erik growled-couldn't the man see this was all just a play for attention? "You should have gone to _hospital_!"

"Good idea, I'll take him," Erik jumped automatically.

"I want Charles to take me," Tom moaned, pressing his bloody face into their floor and making a show of his hurt ribs.

"I'll just call a cab," Charles appeased when Erik gripped his shoulder warningly, because he was not going _anywhere _alone with this cretin.

"I don't want a cab!" Tom shrieked. "I want you!"

"That's not happening," Erik snarled back, yanking Charles to his feet and away from Tom's clutching hands.

"You did this to me," Tom accused of Charles of all people. "You made this happen to me-this is your fault! You owe me!"

Erik grabbed his car keys off the hook and with one clean sweep he had scooped the manipulative man over his shoulder in a bruising fireman's carry that hopefully moved a rib from bruised to cracked.

"Erik!" Charles balked, chasing after him as he walked to his car.

"I'm not going to let him talk to you like that for the twenty minutes it would take for a taxi to get here," Erik growled, opening his door and tossing Tom inside where he moaned piteously and rubbed his ribs. He shut the door, ignoring him, and turned back to Charles who was mincing nervously on the sidewalk.

"Erik, let me come with. I don't want him alone with you."

"Get me some duct tape to keep his mouth shut and you've got a deal. Otherwise I'm going solo."

Charles sighed, didn't look appeased at all. Erik tried to appease him. "He's already been beat to hell. If I feel like punching him I'll just push on a rib or something."

"Don't do that-he's had enough. You saw him."

Erik rolled his eyes, didn't know how to break it to Charles that all that whining, rolling and wailing was just an act, a play of desperation to get Charles' attention, his pity and his affection. It was just a rope to string him close enough to cut into. But Charles never understood underhanded things like that, so Erik let it go.

"I'll have my handy on me the whole time. I'll see you soon," he replied instead, kissing Charles goodbye and slipping into his car.

Before Tom could start up on the goading Erik knew he had signed up for, Erik got on the phone to Chris before pulling away from the curb and his anxious boyfriend.

"Found something of yours. It seems a little the worse for wear. You guys have a fun night tonight?"

Chris was panting.

"Not fucking likely!" he growled. "The bastard hit me with a fucking pipe! Damn his fucking javelin skills-at least he's rusty at it these days. We're at the hospital getting me stitches. Then we're gonna get fucking drunk. You coming?"

"No thanks, I've got an antsy brunet waiting for me at home. I'll just deliver your goods to the hospital and say good riddance."

"He's with you? Careful, brother," Chris warned.

"I'll be okay. Where are you at, so I don't bring him to the same place?"

"Bayview. The nurse is giving me dirty looks. I don't think I'm supposed to have my ce-" the man cut off and Erik chuckled, shaking his head. He considered calling someone else—anyone, really, just to keep himself on the phone and unavailable to Tom, but it would make him look nervous, and he wasn't nervous around this shithead, so he put his handy away.

Tom remained silent and Erik hazarded a glance. The man was leaned up against the door, simply staring at him, both eyes puffy and raw (Raven's good mace?), but one about bruised shut. The icy blue blazed through all impediments and still managed to chill Erik slightly.

"Aren't you going to ask me?" Tom said very quietly.

Erik shifted in his seat, trying to find a response to the question that was not what Tom would expect.

"I guess not," he landed on finally.

"You don't want to know?" Tom questioned, and Erik remained silent purely to thwart the man. "You never really know a person until you've seen them at their weakest point. So actually I know Charles better than you ever have. Don't you want to know what he's like? Once you've ripped him open and pulled out all his little mechanisms to see what makes him tick?"

He turned, teeth bared, shaking with his anger and Tom was grinning back at him—but something in his smile was on edge. Like he wanted Erik to do it.

So instead he sat back, anxious. He had known the man was faking, back at the house. But he'd thought he was faking to get Charles alone with him. Actually he was trying to get Erik alone with him, and he'd simply played straight into the man's hands. He was nervous for a moment that he'd overstepped himself, gotten in over his head. He took a deep breath. He wasn't down for the count quite yet.

"Actually I'm surprised you're not asking _me_ for information. Your data is a decade old, after all. Hardly even relevant anymore," he responded cheerfully, careful not to speed. Tom only needed a police officer to pin those bruises on him and go after his prison widow, just as he and Charles had guessed.

Tom ignored him.

"Maybe it's too morbid for you, thinking about how I crushed all the life out of him. You could ask me about other things. His first fuck, maybe. He moaned like a slut on my dick. It's probably the same noises he makes for you. Once a slut always a slut. Even his first kiss, he kissed just like a whore."

Erik's knuckles were white on the steering wheel, the only thing keeping him from reaching over and tossing that piece of rat-faced shit-eating arsefuckery from his car as they raced down the highway. Somehow through the dark haze of his rage the words snagged something in his mind and he blinked into the capability for speech.

"Wait, what?"

Tom gazed at him suspiciously.

"I mean," he continued. "What did you say about kissing?"

"I said that your boyfriend kissed like a fucking—"

"No, did you say his _first_ kiss?"

Tom grinned again. "I was his first everything, Lensherr. Why should you be surprised that—"

But Tom couldn't finish because Erik was laughing.

"What are you doing?" the taller man snarled, sitting up. "Stop that!"

"Charles never told you?" Erik laughed uproariously.

"What are you talking about? _Stop_!" Tom grabbed him by the collar and shook him until Erik could shove the man away, righting himself on the road and then glaring at him from the corner of his eye, lip curled back from his teeth because he was going to fucking enjoy this.

"You weren't his first kiss, you idiot!" he growled. Tom gazed back at him distrustfully so he continued. "He kissed Tony Stark when he was thirteen."

"Don't be stupid," Tom sneered. "Stark would have been in his twenties then."

"Stark _was_ in his twenties then, and pissed out of his gourd. Charles really never told you? His mother's Fourth of July party? Not ringing a bell?"

"You're lying. I was Charles' first kiss! I was his first everything!"

Erik only grinned. "Tony was drunk off his ass. Charles said he should sit down before he fell down and then dragged him a full five minutes away to sit him down under the old beech tree by the lake. Then he climbed into his lap and kissed him for all he was worth."

Tom was staring outright now, like he'd heard a convincing ghost story rather than one of the most adorably randy things Charles had ever done.

"You're lying," the man muttered.

"Why would I lie?"

"You're trying to take it away from me!" Tom shouted at him, striking out and slamming his hand down on the dashboard. Erik refused to let himself wince at the violence of it.

"_I was here first! I staked my claim first_!" Tom screamed. Then he slid forward, gripping the front of Erik's shirt and hissing. "Everything you've done with him, I've done it first. Do you hear me? When you kiss him it was my lips that were there first, when he sighs your name mine was the first on his tongue, and when you touch him it was my hand caressing the moment before you."

"Let go of me," Erik growled.

Tom ignored him, pulling him closer sideways in his seat and hissing directly into his ear. The man reeked of pepper spray. Go Raven. If only he'd thought to bring some, too.

"There's nothing you've done to him that I haven't done first, do you understand me? Not a goddamned thing."

For some reason that made Erik think, and his brain immediately struck on something Charles had definitely never done with Tom. And the thought of him ever having done it with Tom was so laughable that Erik laughed.

"_What_?" Tom gasped, jumping back as if he'd been burned. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Nothing," Erik laughed, taking the hospital exit. "I was just thinking…No, I don't think he's ever done that with _you_."

"Stop laughing!" Tom shouted. Erik just laughed harder out of spite.

"I actually feel a little bad," he cracked up. "I mean, to spend all that time dating Charles and you were dating like a little amateur version of him! It hardly even counts! You've no idea, Tom. I mean…the things he comes up with these days! He's improved so much with age and you'll never know…it's depressingly hilarious really."

He turned into the emergency entrance and just had time to wipe mirthful tears from his eyes when Tom was suddenly very much in his space, grappling him by the shirt and attempting to slam his head into the window.

"_You fucking bitch_!" the man was screaming. "_I'll kill you, do you hear me? Don't you fucking laugh at me, you bastard!" _

Erik shoved one arm against the door to keep himself from getting slammed into it and snaked his other arm past the vicious body scrabbling against him, finding the automatic lever and jamming it into park before pulling his door open and toppling out onto the street. Thank god for not wearing a seat belt.

Tom toppled with him, clutching at him trying to find another hold, scratching him.

"You bastard! You bastard!" he realized the man was still screaming, but then he was busy trying to avoid getting his head bashed in on the asphalt, trying to roll away but the guy was in a crazed rage, was much stronger than Erik had thought.

Luckily they were at a fucking hospital, and before Erik could get brained on the street a couple EMTs were pulling Tom off of him and pinning the lanky man to the ground.

"What the hell is going on here?" the girl EMT shouted.

"Fuck if I know!" Erik balked, scrabbling to his feet. "I found him on the side of the highway trying to flag down cars and brought him to the hospital! As soon as he saw the place he freaked!" The lie came easily and with Tom's wounds he didn't want to tell the truth: your boyfriend's exboyfriend showing up looking like that wasn't hard to find a motive for.

Tom was still struggling and screaming like a loon, which boggled the mind. If the man was going to accuse Erik of beating him up now would certainly be the time to try and do it. More EMTs ran over, this time with a security guard and Erik took great joy in seeing the mall cop flexicuff Tom's hands behind his back.

"Think it's drugs?" the cop asked the girl EMT.

"Just get him inside so we can take his vitals!" she suggested. She sent them along and glared at Erik.

"Let me see your hands."

"Are you fucking kidding me? He's the one who attacked me! Teach me to play fucking good Samaritan ever again. I thought crazy people were supposed to dress the part?" He held out his hands regardless, since he had nothing to hide. No one could do that much damage to a man's face and not at least come away with bruised knuckles, and the girl seemed content with the pristine state of his.

"You'll have to come fill out a statement," she explained, motioning him inside.

"No thanks. I don't want a paper trail for that freak to find me by. You can have my card. Don't let him fucking find it," he said, handing her his business card from the café. She made him stand there while she called the cell phone listed. Smart chick.

If Charles was happy to see him earlier, Erik was expecting him to be fucking ecstatic to get him back mostly in one piece now; probably about climb up Erik's body to get to his lips and attempt to suck his tongue out of his mouth.

Instead Charles was on the phone, smiling, laughing, and only hardly waved hello to him when he came in. Or maybe he was waving him to be quiet. Erik couldn't be sure before Charles took the phone into his room, shutting the door behind him.

Erik collapsed onto the couch and pouted. He'd narrowly escaped with his life. He deserved a better welcoming than this.

But then Charles was bounding out of the room and throwing himself into Erik's arms, petting him and kissing him all over, hugging him tightly.

"I'm so glad you're alright," he murmured over and over again between kisses.

Erik grinned-this was more like it.

"Surprised to see me again, _Liebchen?_" he chuckled, gripping the smaller man by his waist.

"I didn't put it past him to get you arrested, if that's what you're asking," Charles pulled way enough to beam at him, arms wrapped snugly around Erik's neck as he settled into a straddle in his lap.

Erik smiled back, let his hands wander down that perfect ass. Charles hitched in his grasp, thrilled but not distracted.

"What happened?"

Erik didn't respond, because _that _was the real distraction, not his hands on Charles' tight ass. He just teased Charles' mouth open with his tongue and reacquainted himself with the perfect taste of the man. He thought of Tom, telling him he had done absolutely everything there was to do with Charles before Erik had even met him. He could think of at least one thing he was pretty sure Charles had never done with anyone else.

"Do you have your Halloween costume on you?" he murmured into man's breathless mouth. It quirked up into a smile under his lips and he smiled back against it.

"Does it look like I have it on me?" Charles teased grinding down just slightly. He roamed his hands over the brunet's body as if to check.

"Go put it on," he hissed, squeezing the man against him, pushing up into his weight.

"Erik," Charles whined. "I just got it back from the dry-cleaners! At this rate there's going to be nothing left of it for Halloween!"

"Go put it on," Erik repeated, biting the man's lip gently.

"If I ask them to get come out of leather one more time they're going to ban me, I'm sure of it," he complained.

Erik ignored him. "Go. Put. It. On."


	6. Erik, Epilogue

The first time Erik met Charles he'd had one foot in manageable waters and the other distressingly out of his depth.

He'd been with men before, fucked his fair share, run what he had innocently imagined to be the full gamut of homosexual encounters. What he had never done before in his entire life was pursue someone, especially someone as breathtakingly amazing as Charles.

It probably spoke to his unwitting handsomeness that he had never had to work at getting a relationship or a date. People came up to him and he mostly accepted them, or they gave him a searching look and he responded with predatorial gazes or flat-out lewd lick-lipping, whatever it took to get the message across: 'Since you offer, come and take me'.

It even worked on women, although not as frequently as men, which explained why he'd dated more men than women despite his approximate majority of heterosexuality (this census was taken prior to dating Charles, current figures stand more at 100% homosexual, or maybe Charlessexual).

Magda had simply sat down next to him in the university library and started chatting him up, and after a month of further chatting (and more horizontal conversations) she had simply informed him that he was her boyfriend (she had never said that _she _was _his _girlfriend although Erik had assumed it). That had lasted probably about seven years, although Erik couldn't say that he'd really kept track.

She was out of his life just as suddenly as she had sauntered into it and once he'd recovered from the shock of that (with the help of Emma and his mother and books about serial murder) he'd decided dating women was a bust and had moved on to dating men. Really that moved on to fucking men-it was another year after Magda probably before he met Jason Wyngarde.

The man was maybe twenty years older than Erik, was strangely lanky and had awful facial hair that made him look like an old-timey pedophile, but he was confident and that was really all it took to be eligible to date Erik in those days.

Erik was buying a paper on his way to the bus (this was while he was still suffering the use of public transportation), and had stopped off at the convention center to visit the specialty news bar that had international papers.

Jason simply walked up and asked to take him out to dinner. Erik liked free dinners, and Jason wasn't exactly ugly for all his oddities, so he said yes.

Three months later he had had his fill of awkward sex (ie, near-painful bottoming), even more awkward mind games, and in general being lied to, cheated on, and confused. If being with Magda was forgettable, dating Jason was the most confusing season of his life. To this day he wasn't sure what about the man had been true and what had been pure fabrication. It had nearly driven him back into the arms of women, but then he'd met some sweet boy at the bar and had been convinced to stick around in homosexuality for a bit longer.

Come to think of it the boy had looked strikingly like Charles, even though Charles had been living in England at that time. Still, the dark hair and pale eyes were similar-more similar was their personality: playful and teasing and confident as all getout. But the boy hadn't asked to see him again and so that had gone by the wayside.

Later Erik was at the gym and Gunther Bain had made eyes at him in the shower and Erik made eyes back because he wanted to know if he could top someone bigger than he was. He could, and that was about the most interesting part of his relationship with Gunther, besides their fistfight that had nearly driven Emma back to her NRA roots regarding shooting someone.

He'd met Nay Mor at the swimming pool and the man had asked for his number in the parking lot and they'd dated until Erik got tired of washing the scent of chlorine out of his clothes.

That was it.

Besides one night stands or serial one night stands, those were the only men Erik had been with and they were certainly the only men Erik had dated, and they left his emotional resume desperately wanting.

If Charles had demanded a CV, Erik certainly would have been written off as immature, untried, untested, inexperienced. He had no references and only a laughable track record. He didn't know how to entice, how to seduce, what to do to keep a man around and happy, had to guess his way through the whole thing.

If Charles hadn't been patient, helpful, even professorial with the whole process, Erik wouldn't have given himself very good odds for passing the three-month mark (the span of his longest male relationship). Only by the grace of Charles did he survive the intensive learning process that was their first few months together.

It was still a trial sometimes to wrap his mind around the fact that Charles liked him so much, along with the earthquake shake of the depth of his own emotions towards the younger man. The thought of something happening to them (and how strange to be part of a 'them', an 'us'-half of a partnership, one part of a whole...) was about the most nerve-wracking thing he could consider, only topped by the thought of something, anything happening to Charles himself.

Erik had never felt for another human being what he felt for Charles, and he knew full well that if anything happened to the brunet he'd never find another person to invest his emotions in like this. It was Charles or it was nothing, and luckily Charles didn't seem keen on letting him go quite yet either, so he didn't have to resort to spinsterhood at the moment.


	7. Charles, Part 1

Charles tried to keep his stretching to a minimum in the morning in order to not wake Erik. The man was an incredibly light sleeper, like a soldier constantly battle-ready. The slightest motion and he was up and raring to go. With practice though, Charles had managed to work out a system to keep the man sleeping long enough to simply stare at him.

He loved to see Erik sleeping, and it was a rare day that the man ever fell asleep before him, so mornings were really his only opportunity.

The man made a beautiful picture, the sun sliding through the shades, and all that beautiful, milky skin on display, the covers pulled down to barely hang over angular hips in the heat of the summer night. Erik's hair was a soft sort of copper, but on the rest of his body it was downright gingery, which Charles found impossibly endearing. When he'd first seen Erik naked he had been a little surprised at his boniness, although he thought he'd done a good job not letting it show, and he was used to it by now. It seemed to be the normative state, considering the fact that he had had his boyfriend eating at least one calorie-packed meal a day now and Erik still didn't seem to have gained an ounce.

He spent a minute just watching the movement of the man's ribs as he breathed softly on his back, one pale arm reaching towards Charles, his head facing towards him. Normally Erik slept about wrapped as fully around Charles as he could get, but that was harder to manage in the summer with no air-conditioning.

He could see the nail-marks were Tom had grabbed his man, dull red against snow-white. There was road-burn over one elbow and his palm was marked with gravel. He grit his teeth and had to work for a moment to let the anger slide from him. Instead of sliding away, though, it slid _down_, sinking into the pit of his stomach and pressurizing itself into a bitter pit there. But at least it was out of his mind. He considered calling Carter Ryking again and telling him he'd changed his mind, Ryking couldn't make his own decision, he had to listen to Charles' demands and fire Tom on the spot. More than fire him, destroy him.

He pushed those thoughts aside to join the pit massing in his gut. Tom had learned his lesson. If Ryking fired him it'd be his decision, not Charles' work. All he'd done was warn the man that Tom was disobeying his orders, was going to get himself into trouble out here if he wasn't extremely careful and he already wasn't being careful at all.

Silently as he could manage, he pushed up onto one elbow and reached, fingertips barely brushing over Erik's auburny fringe. The man blinked awake immediately, making Charles grin bitterly. Even after the exhausting work of last night the man couldn't manage to sleep through feather-light touches. Amazing.

Erik's face scrunched up with the confusion of being woken up and he turned petulantly into Charles' embrace, dragging him down off his elbow and into a sleepy cuddle, pressing his face into Charles' collar.

"Wha'd'you wake m'up fer?" he grumbled, hugging Charles tightly around the middle. He grinned into mussed hair, stroking it back and eliciting those quaint purring noises.

"Sorry, kitten, I forgot what a light sleeper you were," he teased, technically lying. But to admit that he simply hadn't minded the idea of Erik awake and with him, looking at him, talking to him, wrapped around him and purring, sounded too needy.

He moved his hands down, rubbing, massaging over Erik's ribs and the knobs of his spine, over the freckles of his shoulders and back, down to the bones of his hips. The taller man nipped his collarbone and rubbed his shin over Charles'.

"I've got to check in on the cafe today. Maybe work a little if it's busy. Want to keep me company?" the man sighed.

Charles wondered if this offer was due to Erik's boredom working the cafe alone, or if the man was actually wanting to keep an eye on him, so he said, "Maybe I'll just wait for you at home."

Erik pushed up onto a shoulder, looking at him with furrowed brows and Charles' breath caught at the beautiful sheen of his eyes, as it always did. They were truly gorgeous eyes, spanning the line from gray to blue to green and always so _piercing_.

"Why don't you want to come?" he questioned, as if genuinely confused. His Irish always came through more thoroughly when he was upset, or when he read any sort of poetry-he claimed that it wasn't a poem until you gave it an Irish accent. It was pretty Irish now.

"I'll come if you really want me to. I'm just not sure if I'll be able to walk there after last night."

Erik's laughter was a cute sort of bark and he fell back onto the bed beaming with all his teeth, so handsome it still had the power to shock Charles. When the man rolled onto his back a strong arm around Charles' waist dragged him along, too, so that he was half on top of his boyfriend, a wonderful position to be in.

"You don't mean to tell me you're sore!" Erik laughed. He leaned forward and kissed the laughter from those lips, the slide of their skin and the memory of what had made him so sore coupled with the morning enough to make him half-hard already.

"I am but it was worth it. You're so incredibly hot when you're fucking your way _through _me," Charles breathed, stopping the taller man dumb with his rather wanton talk. It thrilled him that his voice and his body could have such an effect on the most attractive man he had ever been able to entice. It still seemed as if eventually Erik should realize he was much more attractive than Charles-although the man had stated similar sentences about _him_, so both of them seemed to think they were dating out of their league.

Erik held his face in those long hands and kissed him breathless and Charles loved anew that way of kissing Erik had, of pressing, _licking_ in with his tongue, chasing Charles' lips when he even slightly pulled back.

"Give me half a chance, I'll do it to you again," the man promised, or maybe threatened, the words vibrating into his mouth.

Glorious as that sounded, he wasn't sure his body could take it, so he decided frottage would have to do just as well. He snatched their lube from the nightstand, yanked the tangled sheets from between them, loving the way Erik wriggled and grappled him as they fell back together, slicked and ready. He straddled those slim hips, holding Erik's face to kiss as the other man held his waist to thrust. He ground down, coiling, circling, grinding, enjoying the way Erik groaned out his name, the way the man's eyes slipped back as if Charles were truly a god of sex.

He licked his tongue over Erik's panting, gasping lips, reached down to work a hand between their writhing bodies, took the man firmly and elicited the cry of his name, enjoying the gulping frustration he could bring about simply by working his grip not-quite-fast-enough. Erik's long hands dug roughly into the angles of his arse, pulling him down and in as the taller man ground up into him, hips hitching.

Charles wondered what he could say to make the man come, or if he should merely bring it about with his hand, his hips, rather than his smart mouth. He scraped the stubble of their cheeks together on his way to nip, lick and suck at Erik's jaw, the lobe of his ear and his throat and the angle of his collarbone, the mean mark Tom had made on him, gasping and groaning and hissing Erik's name as the rutting pace of their bodies increased.

"Charles, _Charles_," Erik panted, those short nails digging into his flesh and spurring him on.

He opened his mouth to speak, first instinct to see if he was still capable of thinking up inspired enough slutty talk to make his man moan. But his mind passed up on that task without asking his opinion, and landed further along.

"I love you, Erik," he gasped, one hand grappling at the man's slick shoulder, the other working his thick cock with a passion. They couldn't quite manage to kiss like this, but he spoke against Erik's jaw, his throat, as if his words were a kiss. "I love you; God I love you, my darling, my everything, my Erik, _Erik_."

Those hips under him, fast and erratic, jerked hard and the man's head kicked back; the long line of throat choking out his name like it was wrung from him and feeling that long hot cock spurting against him, twitching and burning, tipped him over and he was coming too, hard and sweet, mingling their come between their enmeshed bodies so that Charles resisted the urge to slip off, just stayed there panting against Erik's heaving chest, breathing in the scent of their skin and their sweat and their come like it was all one shared entity.

Erik used his regained motor control to stroke Charles' hair back, and then let his hands roam over every piece of Charles they could reach as if devoting him to tactile memory.

"Take a shower with me?" Erik rasped and Charles nodded, half-asleep again with the exhaustion of his orgasm.

"Will you carry me?" It was only when Erik laughed and went to do just that that he realized the brute thought he was serious.

"It was a joke! I don't need you to carry me!" he whined, wriggling in the taller man's bridal carry.

"That's not what you said," Erik grinned back smugly. With more time he could have thrashed his way free, but it was a bare couple meters to the shower so Erik had easy work.

As revenge he went after the man under the spray with the loofah.

Erik _hated _the loofah. The man firmly believed it was some sort of medieval torture device, had no belief in its exfoliating capabilities any more than he believed in the exfoliating properties of a knife. He relented when Erik yelped in actual pain, petting at rubbed-raw mark on his side that exactly two swipes of the sponge had scratched into his snowy-white skin.

Laughing but apologizing, he got Erik's mind off it by washing his hair for him, about making the man melt down the drain. When the leftover shampoo was washed away Erik was grinning and affectionate, about as close to ecstatic as he got. The man wrapped him in his long pale arms and held him close, kissing him under the spray.

"Have I mentioned that I love you?" the git questioned, smiling down at him in that way that crinkled his eyes. Charles of course couldn't help but beam back, arms secure around his boyfriend's shoulders.

"Perhaps, but I never tire of hearing it," he admitted. He truly didn't. He didn't even have the excuse of not hearing the phrase very often: Raven, Moira, even Logan if he was drunk enough, said it to him plenty. Even before that all his boyfriends had said it to him often enough, even Steven, whom he'd only dated for a month. Granted Reed had never said it to him in public, but still: it wasn't a phrase he was unaccustomed to hearing.

And yet when Erik said it it felt so much deeper, maybe because it wasn't a phrase Erik tossed around very flippantly. When Erik said it he knew the man meant it in a way that few others ever had. He could feel it was something that would last forever.

"Ich liebe dich, Mausi," the man murmured to him again, sliding their cheeks together to war their stubble. It itched but Charles loved it for the playful motion that it was. He didn't think there was anything more amazing than Erik in a playful mood.

"How do you say, 'Shut up and kiss me' in German?" he laughed.

"Mein Freund ist wirklich gut ausgestattet," Erik informed him, kissing him only lightly and teasingly, waiting for him to repeat before he doled out the real thing.

"Mein Freund, hm? Funny, I was under the impression that meant 'my boyfriend'."

Erik just grinned back toothily. "It means, 'my boyfriend, shut up and kiss me.' I want to make sure you don't use the phrase irresponsibly," the man assured.

He smiled back, fine with playing along. "Ach, mein sexy Freund ist wirklich gut ausgestattet," he hummed back low in his throat and gravelly, sliding his hands flat over those angular hips and that equally angular arse.

Erik beamed back at him, kissed him into the wall and only a failing hot water heater kept either of them from getting an increasingly sore arse that morning.

"We've both of us been very irresponsible tops this weekend," Charles pointed out, his arsehole twinging still as they got dressed.

"I feel fine now," Erik shrugged, smile still secure. He supposed the man had a reason to be so very happy this morning: he'd gotten reamed well and good the other night, got to see Charles' evil ex beaten black and blue last night, and gotten to play with his Halloween costume all the rest of last night. Which reminded him...

"I'll have to bring my lederhosen back to the dry cleaners today," he sighed unhappily. They really were going to ban him. He was going to have to cultivate a new dry cleaner connection.

"When my costume comes in the mail you'll understand how much you're asking of me to leave it alone till October."

Charles didn't doubt it. Those beautifully long lean legs of his boyfriend's all trussed up in British schoolboy shorts? The little cane it came with that would definitely have to be kept at Erik's house to avoid Raven overhearing any disciplinary action? His cock was twitching with just the thought of it. Erik could tell, apparently, based on his libidinous gaze, or maybe the man was just good at reading him these days.

"Okay, okay," he sighed in vague agreement, and changed the subject. "Come on, now, I'll make you breakfast."

"You're crazy!" Erik scoffed. "I ate breakfast _and _dinner yesterday. I'll be full till tomorrow at least!"

"Full of my cock if you don't put some meat on those bones."

Erik just grinned back at him. "Oh _Helligkeit_, I really don't think you understand how threats work."

(*Mein Freund ist wirklich gut ausgestattet: My boyfriend is really hung.)

With Erik around it was surprisingly easy to forget about Tom, which amazed him in some ways. When he was younger he would often imagine what he'd do if he saw Tom again: tear him apart, give him a good talking to, flaunt how much better off he was without the man, what? But now he'd been away from Tom for so long, removed from all the intense emotions Tom had dragged out of him all those years ago, that it was hard to remember the exact taste of his embarrassment, his humiliation and his heartbreak. Especially with a mouthful of Erik, both literally and metaphorically speaking.

When he and Tom had broken up, or rather when Tom had broken up with him, putting the 'break' in 'break-up', he had thought he might die from the pain of it. The pain on top of pain of it; it had all seemed like more than he was capable of surviving. Afterwards he had technically been alive but it was only in the sense that he had a pulse. He felt badly for everyone that knew him at that time: Raven having to put up with it, and Reed for settling for it, all of his friends for being ignored in favor of his own selfish pain. His real self was so much more than who he had been at that time. It was strange to think that Reed had dated someone so different to who he was now: someone needier, sadder, less of a whole person. Strange to think that Tom had dated that same person! Cultivated it, really—drawn out those characteristics in him. How strange that Reed and Tom had both preferred that person to whom he was now! Erik would have hated him them. Another reason not to wish he had met Erik earlier, as he often daydreamed.

The thing was, Tom hadn't just broken up with him, hadn't just shown up one day and told him it was over. Instead he cut Charles down, _stomped _him down until he was low enough to walk away from, until he was nothing more than a useless hull you sold for scrap metal.

How amazing that humans were resilient enough to grow back from something like that. That Charles felt nothing in common with that poor boy who'd had his heart plucked out and dashed against the paving stones...he felt pity, but that was about it. He didn't feel the sort of embittered need for revenge that Erik or Raven or even Logan felt-and Logan hadn't even been there for that! Well, neither had Erik, but Erik was at least influenced enough by the leftover scars of the situation to have an understandable connection, and how silly even those scars seemed now that he could look on seeing the actual Tom again with nothing like his past pain.

Erik and the lot of them honestly probably felt more than Charles did at Tom suddenly turning up again, which was pretty strange. Charles felt that he _should_ feel something. Anger, maybe; he had always pretty much planned on anger when he was younger. Well, admittedly right after the breakup he had mostly planned on confusion. If Tom had shown up on his doorstep then, his monologue would have been mostly strained questions. Why had Tom done that to him? Tom had loved him, he had loved Tom, why had Tom hurt him like that-on purpose and remorselessly, pitilessly?

_Afterwards _it had boiled down to anger: if he saw Tom again he'd slap him, or spit on him, something really dramatic and violent. He was glad that Tom never had come around at that time; he thought the mortification of actually having done any of that would have been even worse than the horror of everything Tom had done to him. He couldn't control Tom's actions, but he could control his own, and there was obviously more embarrassment regarding something you could help than something you couldn't.

The hardest part was thinking that maybe if it hadn't been for Tom he would have been okay. He could have survived his grandfather's death, his mother's death…even breaking up, if it had only been a breakup. It would have been hard, the hardest thing he'd ever done, but he could have done it, he thought. He'd never know for sure. All he had now was the fact of the spiraling depression Tom had shoved him in to and the years of himself that he had lost to dragging his way back out of it. But he had done it. He was stronger now for having done it.

Now Charles just felt removed from the whole situation, as if a different Tom had done that stuff to a different him. Maybe it was just because his life was so very good now, it was hard to think of a time when his life had been so awful. It made him realized that Tom didn't really have a hold on his life now, that Tom hadn't been able to hurt him as much as he had always imagined because he had grown back from it, and that Tom wouldn't be able to hurt him like that again because Tom would never mean as much to him now as he had then.

"I was thinking," he said suddenly, holding Erik's hand as they scoped out the street market up past the elementary school.

"Hm?" Erik questioned, looking away from the bunches of flowers they sold. Charles thought about buying him them, buying the man the whole stall, smiled up at him in the sunshine of a glorious Sunday morning.

"I was thinking: I'd be okay with you tying me up. If you were still interested in it."

Erik stopped walking, just stared at him. It made him feel a little uncomfortable, as if maybe Erik had never been interested in it, as if he were a slutty freak for thinking he was interested in it. If Tom's traumas seemed ridiculous now maybe one day those would too.

But then the glint returned to Erik's eye, and he could breathe easy again-the man didn't think he was a freak. Slut, maybe, but not a freak.

"What's brought this on?" he asked, moving his hand, still holding Charles', around to the nape of Charles' back.

"It's just, I realized how silly it was of me, to hold on to that just because it happened to me once. It was so long ago, and obviously I know you would never do that to me. Wouldn't...leave me, I mean."

"I wouldn't. But that doesn't mean we have to do it. Just because you trust me doesn't mean you feel comfortable with that."

"That's what I mean though. I've been holding on to all these things from so long ago, rather than trying to get over them. I mean, look at you and bottoming. You had trauma with that, but you got over it. I can do that, too, surely," he knew his voice was sounding competitive again, as if whoever managed to work past the most sexual traumas won a prize, but he couldn't help it. "I was nineteen. I don't have to be that person for the rest of my life. I'm not that person. I don't have to live like I am."

Erik smiled down at him, letting the other customers weave their way around them, leaned down and kissed him, and then murmured against his cheek.

"I love you."

Same as always, it sent a shiver up Charles' spine, to hear those words, scarcely a week old. He wrapped his arm around Erik's slim waist, pressed forward, burying his face in the taller man's collar, breathing in the sweet scent of him.

"Ich liebe dich auch."

One of the stands was the Jewish bakery from uptown, and the ancient gentleman that ran their stall loved sharing Hebrew with Erik, and while Charles normally stood beside him in order to mentally jerk off to the sound of Erik's Hebrew, today he snuck away. While the man was distracted with language exchanges, Charles ran back to the flower stall, trying to pick out the perfect bunch before Erik came looking for him.

When the hand closed around his elbow he was actually confused, he didn't think for a moment that it was Erik—it was too rough. Before he could turn to see who it was, that voice was hissing into the space behind his ear. Erik liked to kiss that space-liked to kiss a lot of spaces on him, but that was certainly a favorite-and he shuddered for a moment to have those lips brushing against him _there_.

"Your office. One hour. Leave the kike at home. Stand me up and I'll see to him personally."

He was shocked still for an instant after the hand released him, and when he turned he couldn't make out where Tom could be in the populous crush of people, hardly had time to look when he felt Erik's hand brushing his shoulder gently, a far cry from Tom's bruising grasp.

"Hey, I was looking for you," Erik complained. Charles made sure his face was presentable, nothing worrisome, before he turned into the grasp, beaming up as usual at his gorgeous boyfriend.

"I was going to get you some flowers. But then I couldn't figure out which ones you'd like best," he lied. Of course he could work out which ones Erik would like best: the man had a Victorian mindset when it came to flowers so he only had to choose the ones with the most romantic of flower meanings.

Erik bought it, or pretended to buy it, it was hard to tell. He grinned back, slipping his arms around Charles' waist.

"Aw, _Geliebter_, who needs flowers when I have the world's sunniest sunflower?" the man teased in mockingly saccharine tones, kissing him on just the tip of his nose. He tried for and got a real kiss, trying to work out how the next hour would go, and what he would do once it was up. The pit in his stomach was roiling, begging to expand into the sort of wrath Erik would be proud of. He seriously took it under consideration.

No one scratched his boyfriend, shoved him out of a car and called him a kike, _threatened_ him. Maybe he'd forgiven Tom for what he'd done ten years ago, but the bastard was damn well going to pay for what he had done ten hours ago, ten _minutes_ ago.


	8. Charles, Part 2

He unlocked the door to his office and could feel Tom standing too closely behind him but ignored it. It was escaped easily enough with the door finally open. Flicking the lights on, he stalked over to his desk, seating himself in a rather counseling position: leaned forward, engaged, arms resting across the free space there. His arse was still sore from last night but he didn't allow himself to wince. He'd have Erik see to that that night, if all went well.

He kept his eyes purposefully wide, knowing the effect they could have on people. Knowing the effect they had always had on Tom.

Sure enough, the man faltered slightly, just a tremor of the legs, as he flopped back into the chair before him. He put one ankle up on his knee and leaned into the armrest, glaring at him past a black eye. He made himself purposefully compassionate, affectionate. Tom would think this affection was a sign of weakness and underestimate him, which played to his favor so he allowed it. It had the added bonus of getting under the tall man's skin. Tom, for whatever reason, had always had a low psychological tolerance for the slightest sign of affection. The slightest display of ardor meant eternal love, and the scarcest disavowal meant betrayal. It hurt Charles to play off that, but Tom had driven him to it and he would do what he had to do to protect Erik.

"How is your eye, Tom? Can I get you some ice?" he asked very gently and the man's mouth twisted.

"You _should _feel sorry!" he snapped, forgetting that Charles hadn't mentioned anything about being sorry. "It was your filthy kike boyfriend that did this to me."

Charles refused to let himself be riled by something as base as anti-Semitic name-calling. He put on a disapproving frown that would look more like a pout, probably, to Tom.

"Erik had nothing to do with that, Tom," he complained. It was amazing how easy it was to keep his voice petulant, childish. It reminded him of how good it felt to have a boyfriend now who actually appreciated him as an adult rather than as a whining dependent teenager. If Reed had liked him helpless, Tom had always preferred him innocent and suffering. In Tom's mind Charles needed all the help he could get, especially from a worldly individual like himself. But it would not do to dwell on that when he had such an important conversation still ahead of him. So he added, rather naively: "He promised me."

"Well he broke that promise!" Tom sneered. "He's assaulted people before, Charles, or didn't you know that?"

"That was a long time ago," he replied, making his voice sound rather troubled, shaking his head slightly for good measure. Tom picked up the scent, moved forward excitedly. Charles was amazed anew at how easy this man was to manipulate when Charles had spent the brunt of their last few months together thoroughly turned in circles by him. It went to show what a terrible place he had been in at the time that Tom had managed to burn him up like a tinderbox.

"That was _last night!_" Tom bit back. Charles threw himself back in his chair, it would look like a retreat.

"He was with me all night, Tom! Are you saying he assaulted you in my living room and I just didn't notice it?"

"Not all night. Think. He stepped out."

Charles stared slightly—yes it was true Erik had stepped out earlier in the evening, but that was long before his appointment with Tom and he said so.

"He had my phone number, Charles. From my business card. He called me, changed the appointment time. Didn't you ever think of that? Are you so _blind_?" Tom spit.

He frowned. This was not going to get him anywhere he wanted to go.

"I don't want to talk about Erik anymore," he murmured, looking away.

"There's just one last thing on the matter: you're going to break up with Erik Lensherr."

Charles couldn't help it, he really couldn't: he laughed out loud.

Tom stared at him, shocked, and there was no going back from that so he simply dropped the charade, leaning into his chair easily, probably in a way Erik would describe as 'imperious'.

"Oh no, Tom dear. I'm afraid I can't do that," he chuckled. Really, it was a comical thing to say at all. The man was really slipping.

"Now just a moment, Charles," Tom chuckled back. "You haven't heard my reasoning yet!"

"Alright-feel free," he replied pleasantly. He didn't enjoy the nervous glint in Tom's eye, he didn't enjoy starting to turn the table on the man who had taken advantage of him at his most desperate point in life and scratched his boyfriend's pretty white skin. It would be wrong to do so; it would take all of the justice out of what he was doing, to enjoy this too much.

"If you don't break up with him," Tom started but Charles cut him off with a bored tsking noise and it spoke to the man's nerves that Tom allowed this at all.

"Let's not start in such a manner," he suggested with a rather sultry pout. "We're old friends, after all, and old friends shouldn't threaten one another."

"Stop it!" Tom shouted, jumping from his seat in order to slam his hand on the desk. Charles couldn't help but flinch slightly, but he covered it by wiping down his cardigan. "You _will _break up with him or else!"

Charles didn't bother to ask him what he was referring to, just sat back watching him, careful not to let his compassion reach through to his features at the moment. Now was not the time, Tom couldn't appreciate it right now. It was cruel, but necessary. He stared back at Tom levelly as if he were watching an experiment play itself out. Tom fidgeted, being stared at so coldly, clinically.

"Or else, or else," Tom panted distractedly, running his fingers back through his hair. It was shorter than in high school, and Charles thought it wouldn't feel the same as when he had used to stroke his fingers through it: it looked slicked, now, greased with product.

Tom tried to get a hold of himself, sat back down, crossed his legs, but then uncrossed them, unsure. "Or else...maybe a little call to INS will become necessary."

Charles shrugged unconcernedly.

"You might as well call them on me. Erik and I are both perfectly naturalized US citizens. He even has a US passport. Really, Tom, I'd expect you to know this. Didn't you do your homework at all before coming all the way out here?"

"Funny thing about citizenship, it can be revoked," Tom growled, face burning. Charles rolled his eyes.

"Please move on to the next article of your blackmail," he sighed.

"Excuse me?" Tom nearly screeched-just nearly. He apparently still had enough self-control to keep himself from it entirely, which Charles would have to work on.

"This can't be all you have otherwise you never would have come here. Come on, what else do you have?"

"You think I won't do it?" he hissed, fingers digging into the armrests of his chair. Charles refused to let his face go sympathetic, staring at Tom blankly and panicking him even more. _This was not the right Charles_, the man was thinking. _My Charles never looked at anyone so coldly, so without interest, so imperiously. _

_I'm not your Charles, _he wanted to say, but instead he shrugged, said, "Do I think you won't get Erik arrested for treason? Do I think you won't force him to become an officer of the German army? Really, Tom, there's only so much you _can _do without being omnipotent."

"You mean like getting that darling cafe taken away from him," Tom said smugly and Charles had to physically stop himself from rolling his eyes again.

Tom had never been any good at chess, always going from attack to attack without any esteem for the big picture. He thought that killing every chess piece that came into his path was the same as winning, and at the end he counted up the pieces he'd conquered as if that made up for technically losing. He'd chase the pieces around the board and completely forget that only one piece mattered. This mess, chasing about side issues, wanting to wrack up a quantity rather than a quality of maneuvers, was an extension of that. The man was exceptional at dominoes, though: he could tell instinctively when to knock them over to unleash the greatest amount of damage. But this, this was him out of his depth.

Charles couldn't help but think that Erik would do a much better job threatening someone. He wouldn't putz around with all this ridiculousness, he'd know exactly where to strike: do this or I'll rain agony down upon you and yours. You could tell in the way he played chess: ruthless, stripping away every defense, toying with you, before he lunged for the kill. You got the feeling you never stood a chance even when the man was simply winging it. For such a sweet man he had a bone-bred knack for destruction. It made Charles love him all the more for never having done a destructive thing in his life.

"You can't get his cafe taken away from him, Tom," he sighed with no enthusiasm. It was a hard fact to realize: he had imagined all these years that Tom had somehow defeated him, gotten one over him, when really all that had happened was Charles had tilted himself over an abyss and Tom had come around at the right time to offer a push.

"I can't, no, but the city can. Taxes, problems with his employees, sanitation-all capital reasons to revoke his business licence."

Charles shook his head in amazement. Why beat around with this junk when he could press the issue of the assault? This stuff was just grasping at straws, assault was what Tom could actually try to prove in a court of law. Charles wasn't blind: his exboyfriend comes to town and suddenly gets beat up and here's his boyfriend sitting pretty on an old assault and a seemingly aggressive demeanor.

"Erik does his own taxes, he treats his employees exceptionally and there has never been a single sanitation complaint. Can we move on?" he asked disinterestedly and Tom's face went red with anger. He himself yawned, fiddling with the cuff of his cardigan and thought Tom was about to have an aneurysm, and so Charles took pity on him.

"Let me help you out, Tom dear," he smiled icily. Tom physically shivered at that-he didn't think the man had ever seen him like this and it gave him chills to know that he had always been like this, he'd always had this power at the core of him and Tom had never known him well enough to realize it. How could someone you'd loved for three years not know every facet of you, or even this obvious a facet of you? Erik had known him for six months and had still already come to the conclusion that Charles was part sweet darling and part domineering tyrant. "You'll go to the police and tell them that Erik assaulted you: he has a couple of old assault charges already; even though he didn't do it you could certainly try to get him arrested for it."

"I _will _get him arrested for it," Tom hissed, lips snarling back from his teeth in a way that made him look like a desperate animal. Charles' heart went out to him but he didn't let it show quite yet. This was exactly why he liked to keep his hard-boiled manipulations to a minimum: it was positively no fun putting someone in this kind of desperate position. But knowing he was pushing Tom closer to recovery and out of Erik's life made it necessary. He reminded himself why he was doing this and continued forward.

"And in return Rosamund will go to the police and explain that you seduced your way into her home and drugged her."

Tom only stared, as if Charles had taken this information straight out of his mind rather than through mortal means.

He continued, smiling meanly. Tom looked terrified of the fact that a smile of his could appear mean, that he had this knack at all. "You didn't really think she'd keep quiet about that, did you?"

He had apparently-his face went aggravated red, tight, splotchy.

"I didn't do anything to her!" he snarled.

"Oh, Tom, I know that! You've never been interested in girls. But the police...all the police are going to see is a stalker, a man approaching thirty and having illicit conversations with fifteen year-old girls via the internet, coming into her home while her parents are away and slipping her GHB."

"It'll be my word against hers."

"I wonder whose they'll take: an unhinged older man or a sweet and innocent teenage girl..."

Tom went stubborn, glaring at him.

"I don't care if she does go to the police. If I got to jail I'll take darling Erik along with me!"

"Oh you'll try; I don't doubt that you'll try very hard. But there's something you haven't quite taken into account, darling," he murmured and sat forward in his chair, raising himself to full height in a way that was vengeful and blazing. Erik had dubbed it his angel-with-flaming-sword stance and he didn't doubt he probably bore some resemblance. When he spoke again his voice was scathing and wrathful, "_I __own __this town._"

Tom gulped, eyes bulging and retreated far back into his chair as Charles pressed further forward. He knew exactly what he would look like at this moment: eyes blazing, face stern and flushed with the kind of deranged passion that he got when he started arguing against creationism in public schools. His fingers bit into the arms of his chair, his knuckles going white, but he never wavered his gaze from Tom's and all of this added up to a terrifying image for a man who had never seen him anything but sweet and heartbroken.

"You're out of your depth, Tom. Nick Fury is chief of police now and you'll be lucky if he lets you through the door. If by some miracle you did ever manage to bring it to court I've got the best legal team in the country on retainer and even if I didn't Erik's best friend is Emma Frost and my ex-boyfriend is Harvey Dent. I'm filthy rich and have the sorts of connections that win presidential elections. I've never taken advantage of that before but if it came down to it I'd take advantage of every angle I've got and more to keep Erik safe. There's nothing that you can do to me that I can't fight with all of my not inconsiderable social powers, Tom. There's nothing you can do."

Tom simply stared, gasping for words that wouldn't come and Charles relented, sitting back in his chair loosely, letting his face, his body relax again, back to his old self, as if that wrathful image was a hallucination born of madness.

"Let's face it, Tom. You're simply no good at this," he said very gently, almost sadly.

Tom shook himself back to life angrily, spitting. "You have no idea what I'm capable of!" he screamed, lunging forward. Charles let him continue, offering a soft commentary that Tom talked over but certainly heard.

"I put Rory on suicide watch! That was me!"

"You drove a hysterical girl to hysterics," Charles corrected softly.

"Wesley's in jail because of me!"

"Wesley's in jail because he killed his father."

"I whipped Robbie all the way to Afghanistan!"

"He agreed to enlist so that the Tallises wouldn't press charges. Can't you see, Tom? None of these things have anything to do with you."

Tom turned to him, his eyes burning with hatred and Charles frowned sadly. He had been hoping they'd be able to salvage some kind of friendship when this was all over. Maybe that had been naive of him. Much as Erik doubted it, he was capable of thinking himself naive from time to time-just not as nearly as often as Erik probably thought it.

"I broke you," he hissed, spitting. "I burnt you to ashes. I razed you to the fucking ground."

"You hurt me, I'll give you that, but I think you hurt yourself just as much. Maybe even more."

Tom's confusion dropped him back into his chair. He was shaking, but Charles couldn't quite tell if it was with wrath, bewilderment, or fear.

"What the hell are you talking about? That's ridiculous."

Charles eased out of his chair, gently, everything about him gentle, allowing, sweet, the same boy Tom knew, none of that terrifying newness he had developed in the years from nineteen to twenty-nine. He moved around his desk, leaning against the front of it, his legs in line with Tom's. The other man shied away, shifted his legs as far from Charles as they could get without leaving the chair.

"You loved me, Tom. And I know it had to hurt to attack what you loved."

Tom scoffed, sputtered, blanched; Charles knew he was right, even though Tom shouted, lunging to a stand in his ire, "I never loved you, you twit! It was all an act, don't you get that? You were a lesson in destruction three years in the making! You were my masterpiece. No one has fucked up a human being the way I did you!"

Charles let him finish his tirade without blinking. Literally without blinking. By the end of it his eyes were watering and he held them purposefully wide, but not so wide as to look frightened. In this way, the light caught them spectacularly and he didn't imagine much else could bear as striking a figure.

"You did love me," he murmured softly, sweetly, pressing forward just enough to be indiscreet. His proximity startled Tom, just as he had known it would. The man stared, shocked and not a little frightened into his eyes that had to be blue enough to about gleam like stars at this point.

The man's voice snarled out in complete discord with his distracted, almost fearful face. "I didn't-I didn't love-how could I? You're one of them, you bastard, you _bastard_! You deserved it all-you deserved _more _than I gave you!" Tom's long spidery hands bit into his collar, gripping him roughly, violently, dragging him closer but forgetting that closer could be every bit as seductive as it could be threatening.

Charles laid his own hands over the top of them gently. Everything gently. Stroked them.

"Who's them, Tom? Who am I one of?" he murmured, caressing each word on their way out and Tom's eyes followed his mouth, followed his caress. The man's breath was hitching, his mind seemed to have dislocated from the rest of his body.

"You didn't love me," he said, but Charles wasn't even sure if he was aware he had said it.

"I did-"

That was as far as he got before Tom shook himself into reason again, shook Charles along with him. "You did not! Not like I needed you to! Not _enough_!"

Charles pressed into the source of the wound, violent in his intentions but not in his words.

"You mean because I wouldn't run away with you."

The man snarled, recoiled as if struck, but by simply slipping his hands to Tom's hips (and managing to not shudder at how much bonier they were than Erik's somehow) he stilled him again.

"I'm sorry, Tom. I'm sorry I couldn't go with you-that I couldn't be there for you when you needed me." Charles really wanted it to be true, he really wanted to feel sorry that he hadn't been able to help Tom, but for some reason he just couldn't manage it. With all the troubles he'd had personally at the time, all the things he was dealing with or helping his sister deal with, it was no wonder he hadn't had the energy or interest in helping Tom through a trouble that wasn't really a trouble. He recognized that it was tough, finding out you were adopted, but he still had a family that wanted him, whereas Charles...

"You could have!" Tom snarled, hands still digging into Charles' shirt, shaking him slightly like a misbehaving child. "You could have left with me-who'd have cared? Your grandfather was dead, your mother was almost dead. You had nothing to keep you there!"

"I had Raven, school was starting again in the fall, my friends."

Tom only scoffed, shoving him away roughly. Charles' wrist was flung into the desk hard but he didn't let himself wince, cry out.

"If you'd really loved me you wouldn't have cared about that-about any of that! If Erik asked you to run away with him you'd do it!"

"Erik wouldn't ask me for something he knew I couldn't give him," Charles replied. He wasn't positive about that, of course, it had never come about, but he thought he was right. He hoped that wasn't naive of him, didn't care too much if it was.

"You could have given me that! You could have if you'd wanted to!"

"Tom," he said, shaking his head. He'd had no idea the man's ideas of him were so flummoxed, so warped. "Tom, even if I _had _gone with you, even if I'd dropped out of Columbia and abandoned my little sister with our steward and left my mother on her deathbed...Even if I had done all of those things, Tom, it wouldn't have mattered. I was never going to be enough for you. We were always going to break up."

Tom simply stared at him, as if he'd started speaking another language suddenly. But no, because Tom definitely understood what he had said, he just didn't know how to catalogue the information, what to do with it.

"You're lying," Tom mumbled and he was genuinely surprised. Out of all the things he'd said, _that_ was what Tom thought was a lie?

"We were never any good for each other," Charles tried to explain.

"Stop it."

"You had your own ideas of who or what I was and I went along with that role because I liked you. I always wanted to accept you more than I could actually manage to. I wanted to like the Smiths but I couldn't get the hang of it, not like you. I hated reading poetry with you, or when you'd try to get me to like beatniks. It was awful. Once the thrill wore off of being the only gay couple in our town we would have drifted apart. Adrenaline was the only thing keeping us together."

"You loved me," Tom accused as if it were a sin.

"Yes I loved you; of course I loved you. But it was puppy love. Puppy love outgrows itself, eventually. You would have outgrown me, Tom. I would have outgrown you. If you hadn't broken up with me, we would have still broken up."

Tom was shaking his head violently, fell back into his chair because his legs couldn't sustain him anymore.

"No!" he shouted, but couldn't look right at him. "You loved me, I know you loved me, loved me more than anyone!" Charles wasn't sure if Tom meant Charles loved him the most out of everyone Charles loved, or loved him the most out of everyone who loved him, but let him continue. "You would have kept loving me. I wouldn't have let you stop loving me."

"Oh, Tom," he sighed, stepping in close again and caressing the man's shaking shoulders. "I do still love you. I've never stopped loving you."

Tom stared up at him, icy blue eyes wide and shocked.

"What?" he mumbled and Charles smiled down at him softly.

"I'll always love you, Tom."

The words were sinking in, addling the man's brain even further, confusing him, turning him in circles.

"Even after everything I did?" he questioned weakly and Charles' smile brightened with actual happiness. Tom knew what he had done. He knew it had been bad, something to never be forgiven for: he wasn't beyond redemption so long as he knew the difference between good and bad.

"You're a part of me, Tom. You'll always be a part of me, of who I was." He stroked his hands through Tom's hair as he spoke and he was right: some sort of product these days. It felt greasy, gross. He shoved the feeling aside, ignored it.

Tom in turn reached out, almost hesitantly, sweetly, put his hands on Charles' hips and leaned forward, resting his head on Charles' stomach.

"You're all I have, Charles," he murmured, his voice warbling slightly. His shoulders shook. Amazing-and Erik and the like said that affection couldn't change people, couldn't do what violence could do.

"No," he sighed back, and shifted to his knees between Tom's legs, holding the man's face, looking into his glassy, wet eyes. "I'm not all you have. I've never been all you have. You just couldn't see all you had."

The taller man shook his head, confused.

"Your parents, Tom, your brother, your family."

Tom wanted to pull away but Charles didn't let him, pulled him closer instead, wrapping his arms around Tom's shoulders. The man held him back tightly. He missed Erik, wanted _Erik_.

"They're not my family. They lied to me. They lied to me my whole life. Laufey-that's my family."

Charles stroked his hair, his back, talked into his shoulder. The man had some sort of cologne on and Charles didn't like it and it was hard to ignore but he did his best.

"Laufey gave you away, Tom. The Odinsons-they wanted you. They still want you. They love you, Tom. Not because they have to-not because genes or society tells them to, but because they want to."

"Like you," Tom murmured, pulling away enough to look into Charles' eyes, to stroke his face, to kiss him lightly on the lips.

Charles let him-it would only derail everything not to let him, but when Tom broke away slightly he pulled back under the pretense of stroking Tom's hair, looking him over.

"I have something for you. I hope you'll accept it."

The man was too emotionally wrecked to even feign curiosity, but he rose when Charles led him to, clutching Charles for a moment before letting him go to the door.

Mr. and Mrs. Odinson were waiting just outside.

Frigg saw her son first, and burst into tears automatically, running the few feet between them and hugging him, clutching him, crying over his wounds. Charles was disgusted with himself for being jealous at this, but it made sense. His own mother had never treated him like that, and Tom had had it and thrown it away for years, for a decade.

But then Erik was there, stroking his hair, his back, watching with him as Mr. Odinson, crying as well, got his turn at hugging his son.

"We've missed you so much," Mrs. Odinson was wailing, keening, over and over, all she could say past her sobs.

Mr. Odinson pulled back, thumping his hands all over Tom's shoulders, his arms, as if testing him for solidity. He was saying something and Charles could hear the tenor of his voice but not the words themselves. Tom was crying silently, nodding. Charles let himself breathe a little easier, relaxing into Erik's grasp slightly. The taller man smelled as he always did, of coffee grounds and his cologne and it made Charles smile.

Tom apparently agreed to let his parents take him home. His job back in California was tenuous at best-no point in going back right now. He had burnt that bridge and it would take time to rebuild it if that's what he wanted to do.

Mrs. Odinson hugged Charles tightly on her way out the door and he tried not to stiffen too much in her grasp. Mothers always made him anxious-he had so little understanding or experience with them. Mr. Odinson shook his hand heartily, and then Erik's, too. Tom just held their hands together, burying Charles' between both of his own palms.

"I guess I won't see you for a while," he muttered, looking only at their hands and nowhere else.

"You'll see me when you get better," Charles assured.

The man nodded and leaned in closer, laying a kiss to Charles' crown that he was surprised Erik tolerated.

Then his exes' parents were walking him away and he was following, docile with exhaustion.

Charles let himself lean heavily into Erik's hold, turning and resting his head on the man's shoulder.

"Are you okay?"

He nodded, smiled against Erik's throat for a moment.

"Although if I had known today was going to involve so much sitting I don't know but that I might have told you to calm down a little last night," he teased.

Erik grinned down at him and he loved the way the man's lips pulled back from his teeth, even just slightly. Somehow no one looked as happy as Erik did when he smiled.

"Still sore?" the man asked, hand moving from his waist down to his arse tantalizingly. That was yet another marvelous thing about his boyfriend: such large hands, and such perfectly long fingers.

"Mmm," Charles hummed in agreement, shifting his hips under that grasp in the way he knew Erik liked. "Kiss it better?"

He looked up in time to see Erik wrinkle his nose at him and grinned because of course Erik hadn't meant him to see that. He knew Erik was less than avid about rimming (although he always seemed perfectly pleased when Charles did it to him), and Erik knew that Charles knew this, but they both liked to pretend otherwise, the same way Charles let Erik think that he liked getting spanked (it was awkwardly paternalistic as far as he could tell, but he had a theory that his missing the point on sexy paternalism was due to his lack of actual father figure).

The unspoken rule seemed to be that the act would not be requested flippantly and the less avid partner would feign avidity. Erik also seemed to allow Charles added points because his role in getting spanked required a lot more acting than a quick rimjob.

Charles had offered to put an end to it once: no more rimming and no more spanking, but Erik had turned him down on the offer. He apparently liked spanking enough to tolerate the few and far between times Charles requested the company of his mouth.

Like now.

"Well let's get you home-I'm not going to lick you over right here in the hallway," Erik groused.

Before he lets things progress so far as that, though, Charles had to get something off his chest. Just in case Tom returned less than healed and decided to start trouble again.

"It wasn't anything, Erik, but Tom did...well, he did kiss me. Just for a second," he admitted nervously.

Erik glared back at him ruefully.

"I thought he might."

Charles stared back, eyes wide with surprise. "You did? And you still let me come?"

The older man shrugged. "You had me waiting just in the hallway. I figured I'd hear if something went wrong...Also, your sister lent me this:" And from his coat pocket he pulled Raven's taser she'd bought from a website in Russia that vastly exceeded the legal amp limit.

"Jesus, Erik! You could've killed him!" he balked.

"If he slipped you any tongue I still might."

Charles ignored that, pulling Erik closer by the hips.

"Speaking of slipping me some tongue..."


	9. Charles, Epilogue

The first time Charles met Erik he was at Wizard Books.

Well, maybe 'met' was misleading. 'Saw,' 'smelt,' 'heard,' 'lusted after'-those were all perfectly honest.

Wizard Books was his favorite bookstore because it was exactly on his way to and from campus. Really, this whole stretch of two blocks was his favorite in the city. The pizza place, the soup and sandwich joint, the coffee place he liked the look of but had never actually entered-it was all gorgeous and _his_ on a daily basis. Despite how much he loved the stretch, though, the only places he had ever actually been in were the drugstore on the corner and this bookstore. This was purely by accident; he always meant to explore further, but just never seemed to get around to it.

Today he was enjoying the air conditioning and scoping out the sort of mindless literature he could zone out with at the lake house with Raven and Moira and her son Kevin. Logan might even make it. Summer vacation was his favorite time for just this reason: no classes, and no one was honor-bound to spend time with their family like at Christmas vacation.

He had told Moira he'd try to find some kind of chick lit book for her, and was considering getting one for himself too, to get into the true mindless swing of things, when it happened.

The man scoping out the history section behind him shifted sideways, standing directly behind Charles in the narrow aisle and Charles got an instant lungful of the man's cologne and was suddenly hooked.

He took deep breath after deep breath, had to put a hand out to steady himself on the bookcase in front of him or else risk falling over in his concussive lust.

He wished he'd looked up when the man had come into his aisle. As it was he didn't even know what the man looked like-could only really tell by the cologne that it was a man at all, and the peripheral sense that he was taller than Charles.

Before Charles could immediately start seducing him, sight unseen, the man's cell phone rang and he answered it.

"What?" the man said, voice gruff and low and seeping straight into Charles' cock.

He gulped, tried to think straight.

While the man was distracted he managed a slight turn, just enough to get a sight of the stranger.

Taller than Charles, by a head maybe, or slightly less. He had short auburn-looking hair, and despite the heat of the day he was dressed in heavy jeans, but coupled it with a shirt so thin Charles imagined he could see through it: dusky and shoved up at the sleeves and clinging to every chiseled plane of him.

Charles' desire hit him like a sudden roiling wave and he had to suck back a rush of saliva.

"It's under the cash register. To the right...Are you kidding me? I can't leave you alone for two seconds? Look for it, damn it," the man was sighing. Charles realized his voice had some sort of accent. Faintly European. Irish, certainly some portion of it was Irish, but what was that he detected underneath it? Or had it simply been tapered out with Americanism? He wanted to know-to know all that and more about the stranger.

"For fuck's sake," the man growled. "Don't move. I'm on my way."

He jabbed his phone off with irritation and stormed from the aisle and didn't notice when Charles followed him to the door. Luckily Charles realized he could not actually follow the man home, and stopped himself at the entrance, taking deep breaths and trying not to work himself up into a full erection by staring at those slim hips as they moved. The man didn't really walk at all but _prowled_, so intense and erotic that Charles could barely see past the haze of his own burning _want_.

A couple seconds of safety-buffer and he slipped out the door, watching as his new idol disappeared into the cafe on the corner.

He realized he hadn't even seen the man's face.

Then he talked himself down from finding a bathroom near enough for a wank, rushed back into Wizard, and vacillated for the next couple of months between stalking this man or letting fate intervene if it would.

That decided, he had Moira pay him back for a babysitting weekend by bringing him to that quaint cafe she was always raving about. He had a hope that Café Haifisch was going to play a big part in his life for a while.

Theeeeeeeeeeee Ennnnnnnnnnnnnd!


End file.
